Interzone #091 (1995 01)

intei*zoiie/oi

£2.50 SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY Ja ?S

‘The Hunger
and Ecstasy of
Vampires’ by

Brian Stableford

plus stories by
Stephen Baxter
Peter Garratt
Vilma Kadleckovi

Michael
Moorcock and
Tad Williams
interviewed

Charles Platt

on fiction versus
CD-ROMs

1895 celebrated!

Clarion West
Writers
Workshop

For writers preparing
for professional careers
in science fiction and
fantasy.

I Jun e 18 -July 28, 1995

Howard Waldrop
Joan Vinge
John Crowley
Bruce McAllister
Gardner Dozois
Katherine Dunn

INSTRUCTORS

Deadline for applications is April 1,1995.
Write or call for information. $100 reduction
in tuition for applications received by March
1, 1995- Women and minorities encouraged to
apply. Limited scholarships available.

Clarion West ■ Suite 350 ■ 340 15 th Ave. East ■
Seattle, Washington 98112 • (206) 322-9083

Editor & Publisher

David Pringle

Deputy Editor

Lee Montgomerie

Assistant Editors

Paul Annis,
Andy Robertson,
Andrew Tidmarsh

Consultant Editor

Simon Ounsley

Advisory Editors

John Clute,
Malcolm Edwards,
Judith Hanna

Graphic Design and Typesetting

Paul Brazier

Subscriptions Secretary

Ann Pringle

Circulation Advisers '

The Unlimited Dream Company

Interzone

217 Preston Drove, Brighton BN1 6FL,
United Kingdom.
All subscriptions, back-issue orders, general
correspondence, books for review, and
enquiries about advertising should be sent g
to this address
Subscriptions:
£28 for one year (12 issues) in the UK.
Cheques or postal orders should be crossed
and made payable to Interzone.
Overseas subscriptions are £34, payable by
International Money Order.
Payments may also be made by Access or
Visa card (also MasterCard or Eurocard):
please send your cardholder's name, initials
and address written in block letters, with
card number, card expiry date and signature.
(Note: overseas payments will be charged at
the £ sterling rate.)
U.S. subscribers may pay by dollar check
$52 by Air Saver (accelerated surface mail).

Lifetime subscriptions:
£280 (UK); £340 (overseas); $520 (US,
accelerated Surface mail).

Back-issues
of both Interzone and SF Nexus are
available at £2.50 each in the UK
(£2.80 each overseas), postage included. (US
dollar price: $5 Air Saver.) All issues are in
print except Interzone numbers 1, 5, 6, 7, 16,
17, 20, 21, 22 and 23. Order them from the
address above.

Submissions:
stories, in the 2,000-6,000 Word range,
should be sent singly and each one must be
accompanied by a stamped self-addressed
envelope of adequate size. Persons overseas
please send a disposable manuscript
(marked as such) and two International
Reply Coupons. We are unable to reply to
writers who do not send return postage.
No responsibility can be accepted for
loss or damage to unsolicited material,
howsoever caused. Submissions should be
sent to the Brighton address above.

interzone

SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY

No 91

January 1995

CONTENTS

Fiction

Features

8

BRIAN STABLEFORD
The Hunger and
Ecstasy of Vampires

Illustrations by SMS

31

PETER T. GARRATT
Yuletide Karaoke

40

46

VILMA KADLECKOVA
The Goods

STEPHEN BAXTER

Brigantia’s Angels

Illustrations by Noel Bateman

4

5

24

INTERFACE

Editorial

INTERACTION

Readers’ Letters

MICHAEL MOORCOCK
AND TAD WILLIAMS

interviewed by Stan
Nicholls

NICK LOWE
Mutant Popcorn

Film Reviews

A A CHARLES PLATT

On the Tenacity of Fiction

C C DAVID LANGFORD
33 Ansible Link
CiL PAULJ.McAULEY,
30 BRIAN STABLEFORD,
CHRIS GILMORE, PAUL
BEARDSLEY AND MIKE ASHLEY
Book Reviews

Cover by S MS celebrating the centenary of The Time Machine

Published monthly. All material is © Interzone, 1994, on behalf of the various contributors

ISSN 0264-3596

Printed by KP Litho Ltd, Brighton

Trade distribution: Diamond Magazine Distribution Ltd.,

Unit 1, Burgess Rd., Ivyhouse Lane, Hastings,

E. Sussex TN35 4NR (tel. 01424 430422).

Bookshop distribution: Central Books,

99 Wallis Rd., London E9 5LN (tel. 0181 986 4854).

Interface

ighteen Ninety-Five
was quite a year. It
saw publication of
H. G. Wells’s first
important work of
fiction, The Time
Machine, which inaugurated
the tradition of the British
scientific romance (yes, there were

plenty of precursors, from Mary
Shelley to George Griffith, but it
was only with Wells - and in
particular with The Time Machine -
that British sf really arrived). In
1895 the fecund Wells also
published a fantasy, The Wonderful
Visit, and such short stories as "The
Argonauts of the Air." This was the
year Wilhelm Roentgen discovered
X-Rays, and Guglieimo Marconi

made the first radio antenna. It was
also the year in which the Yellow
Nineties reached their apogee with
the trial and martyrdom of Oscar
Wilde (a great fantasy and horror
writer, among other things).

Wilde's fellow Dubliner, Bram
Stoker, was already engaged in
writing Dracula (1897), the
cornerstone of the modern horror
genre. And towards the end of 1895
there arrived a whole new
technological means of story-
telling, the cinema, heralded by the
first projected film-shows of the
Lumiere brothers in Paris.

Beginning immediately in 1895,
there appeared a succession of
one-minute trick films, many of
them with "science-fictional"

Books of SF, Fantasy & Horror Interest
First Published in 1895

The Little Green Man by F. M. Allen
The British Barbarians by Grant Allen
The Desire of the Eyes and Other Stories
by Grant Allen

The Story of Ulla and Other Tales
by Edwin Lester Arnold
A House-Boat on the Styx
by John Kendrick Bangs
The Face and the Mask by Robert Barr
The Green Mouse by Robert W. Chambers
The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers
The Sorrows of Satan by Marie Corelli
Black Spirits and White
by Ralph Adams Cram
The Crack of Doom by Robert Cromie
The Lost Stradivarius by 1. Meade Falkner
The Wallypug of Why by G. E. Farrow
The Ghost of Guy Thyrle by Edgar Fawcett
The Outlaws of the Air by George Griffith
Valdar the Oft-Born by George Griffith
Heart of the World by H. Rider Haggard
Stella &An Unfinished Communication
by S. E. Hinton

The House of toy by Laurence Housman
The Second jungle Book
by Rudyard Kipling

Zoraida by William Le Queux
Etidorpha, or The End of the Earth
by John Uri Lloyd
Lilith by George MacDonald
The Sin-Eater and Other Tales
by Fiona Macleod

The Three Impostors by Arthur Machen
Child Christopher and Goldilind the Fair
by William Morris
The Great Secret by Hume Nisbet
Dies Jrae The Story of a Spirit in Prison
by Margaret Oliphant
The Impregnable City by Max Pemberton
A Deal with the Devil by Eden Philpotts
The Garden Behind the Moon
by Howard Pyle

Lost in a Comet's Tail (and many other
Frank Reade, Jr. novellas)
by Luis P. Senarens
Prince Zaleski by M. P. Shiel
Propel lor Island by Jules Verne
The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents
by H. G. Wells

The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
The Wonderful Visit by H. G. Wells

subject matter (sausage-making
machines, limb transplants,
automata, X-ray machines, giant
insects, aircraft). Of course, the
first proper science-fiction film was
still several years away (Georges:
Melies's 21 -minute epic Voyage
dans la lune, 1902, vaguely based
on Jules Verne), as was the first
successful heavier-than-air flight
(the Wright brothers, Kitty Hawk,
1903); but 1895, despite its fin de
siecle associations, represents a
beginning - for science fiction, for
the cinema, and for the 20th
Century. We celebrate that
remarkable year in this issue’s two’ -
principal stories, by those present-
day Wellsians Brian Stableford and
Stephen Baxter.

If retrospective Hugo, -Work! fantasy
and Bram Stoker’awards could be-C

given to the books of 1895, which
titles would be the winners? The
Hugo Award, undoubtedly, ten times?
over, to The Time Machine by H. G.
Wells; the World Fantasy Award,
equally undoubtedly, to Lilith by
George MacDonald; and the Bram
Stoker Award, perhaps, to The Three
Impostors by Arthur Machen
(although Chambers's The King in
Yellow and Falkner's.The Least f
Stradivarius would both be'strong ’
contenders for this last). Anyone”’
disagrpe?*ro put things in
perspective,. .let us not forget that the
runaway bestseller of 1895 was that
forgotten masterpiece of kitsch,Marid ;
Corel li's The Sorrows of Satan. If
awards had been voted on by "Tans" of
the day, perhaps Corelli would have
swept the board. A sobering thought
David Pringle

interzone January 1995

I nteraction

Dear Editors:

The account of my confrontation with Bob
Heinlein in Tom Shippey's Mexicon lecture
(Interzone 88, October) is largely correct, and
in fact it has been fairly widely reported.
There's a brief version in Larry Niven’s N-
Space, and a very full account in Chapter 28
of Neil McAleer’s Odyssey: The Authorized
Biography of Arthur C. Clarke.

The confrontation took place in Larry's
house, and those present included Teller's
deputy, Lowell Wood, and General Dan
Graham, the "High Frontier" chairman.
Recently, 1 was approached by someone who
wanted to do a write-up of the whole affair,
and I suggested they contact the principals
and then send it to me for my comments.

The whole incident was so unpleasant
that I tend to suppress any memories, but as
it was of some importance I think we should
put the record straight. All good wishes...
Arthur C. Clarke
Colombo, Sri Lanka

Editor: With reference to Tom Shippey's article
in issue 88, we'd like to point out that his piece
also appears in Foundation no. 61, Summer
1994, in a rather fuller revised version with
footnotes. It was not intended that the speech
appear in both magazines, but there was a mix-
up (caused by the very long delay in
publication of Nexus 4, which eventually
became Interzone 88; and, for that matter, by
the delay in publication of Foundation 61,
which did not come out in the summer but
later). We apologize for our part in the
confusion.

Dear Editors:

I would like to correct the information given
at the end of the Alan Moore interview
( Interzone 89). He is currently writing a novel
for Gollancz, entitled Voice of the Fire. This
will be Alan's first foray into full-length
prose and I'm very excited about it. He is
about half-way through, and we expect to
publish in 1996. Thanks for your attention.
Faith Brooker

Senior Editor, Victor Gollancz Ltd
Dear Editors:

Thanks for getting an e-mail address. 1 kept
meaning to write to you, but somehow never
got around to it. So, when I saw the e-mail
address, i finally sat down at my computer.

I've been reading Interzone since issue one
- always getting it here in the USA. I've
enjoyed watching the magazine develop and
improve. It provides an introduction to many
good authors and stories that I just would
not get here in the US. I used to also read
Asimov's SF Magazine, but finally got a bit
bored with it.

First, the Good-

Lots of great stories, introducing me to

Dear Editors:

You asked for comments on your
redesign, so I’ll let you have
mine. I have no objections to this
in principle, but some of the
details of the changes don’t seem
to me to be for the better. Your
new font looks rather thin and
grey, making the magazine harder
to read - while some of the titles
and headings are all too heavy
by comparison. I think that
some more consideration may
be in order.

As to the actual content - 1
think that I want you to stick
with the established 1Z style.

Comparing issues 88 and 89. I
much preferred the latter, despite
the fact that only one of the stories in
it really worked for me, and that not much.

lots of new authors - Greg Egan, Geoff
Ryman, etc. - as well as providing authors I
already knew like Ian McDonald, Aldiss,
Ballard, Holdstock, etc. Good Book Reviews
- even though 1 can't get some of the books
in the US at all (I sometimes get British
editions at Dark Carnival bookstore in
Berkeley). Interesting interviews -
sometimes introducing me to a new author
that 1 had not heard of.

The Bad:-

I don’t care much at all for the new
graphics look which started in 1Z 88. 1 am
not particularly "stuck in the mud” about
liking the old style. I just find the new style
to be harder to read and distracting from the
stories. Keep searching and trying - there is
nothing sacred about the old way: I'm just
not very pleased with this particular new
one. No comments about the new editorial
approach (haven't read #88 fully yet - partly
put off by the graphics).

Overall - KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK. I'll
keep my subscription going as long as you
continue to explore new writers, new edges
of sf, etc. Someone has to keep this field
moving forward...

Gary Franlcel
Nevada City, CA

Editor: The above letter, and the following one,
both came by electronic mail, which is a handy
way to receive readers' comments (our e-mail
address is interzone@cix. compulink.co.uk).
As I said in issue 89, we're still in the early
stages of learning how to use the facility and as
yet we don’t want to receive subscription queries
or story -submission enquiries by e-mail (we
would not be able to cope with them) - but
those readers who wish to send comments for
the letter column, and who have access to the
means, are welcome to send us their remarks
electronically.

At least these tales were trying, successfully
or otherwise, to go out into the world as
stories - to be the sort of thing that a broad-
minded "non-sf reader" might read and
grasp and perhaps enjoy. By contrast,
everything in 88 - even the fiction - seemed
introverted and rather fannish - although
the fandom involved might range from
traditional skiffy drinker-thinkers to black-
clad pretentious pseudo-existentialists.

Sorry to seem so conservative, but you r
asked for opinions.

Phil Masters

Editor: The apparently "thin and grey" type
has been causing us some concern too. Paul
Brazier is working on thickening it up -
perhaps you'll see an improvement this issue -
and we certainly intend to get it right in the end.

Dear Editors:

A quick note with a thought for a new
Interzone feature which occurred to me while
reading )ohn Clute's review column. He and
other reviewers often quote leading and
well-recognized examples of particular plot
scenarios or sf ideas. However, your younger
readership (myself included, of course!) may
be unfamiliar with some of these 1950s, 60s
and 70s classics.

So it may be worthwhile considering a
new, one-two page feature where readers,
contributors, authors, etc., list their "top
ten" sf titles together with a brief plot
summary and details of why th.ey rate each
title so highly. Apologies if this has been

interzone January 1995

done prior to issue 60 when my subscription
started. Regards and congratulations on
maintaining a highly enjoyable and
excellent-value publication.

Julian Remnant

London

Editor: A long time ago we did attempt
something of the sort you suggest, asking
readers to list their Top Tens, hut the response
was patchy. Would anyone like to have a go
again? Meanwhile, speaking personally, my
book The Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction
(Grafton, 1 990) was intended to fill the gap
you point out, with its thumbnail “ reviews " and
star-ratings of several thousand sf titles past
and present. You may be interested to know
that I've recently completed a second edition of
this book, adding about 40,000 words and
revising much of the old material. It will appear
as a fat hardcover from Scolar Press, a division
of Ashgate Publishing, Aldershot, Hampshire,
early in 1995. You might like to try ordering it
from your library - David Pringle.

Dear Editors

It looks as though Interzone is following the
Rupert Murdoch guide to media domination
- swallowing the competition up like
gumdrops. First Million, now Nexus... What
next? New Worlds? The Christian Science
Monitor? Hello?

Issue 88 was puzzling at the start. There
seemed to be a mild degree of clutter and an
air of - dare I say it? -insobriety about the
whole thing. Where, for instance, was the
normal David Langford mug-shot, with his
candid, professorial grimace? Instead, he's
got some jaunty little cartoon chap to stand
in for him, as if we read him for his jokes, for
goodness sake! Still, using "Ansible Link” as
a kind of home basej I gradually managed to
negotiate my way around the unfamiliar
territory, and, once I'd recovered from the
culture shock, I must say, much of it was very
pleasing, and alleviated one or two things
that have bugged me about IZ for a while
now.

I'll admit, straight off. I've never been a
fan of IZ's artwork. Usually, the pictures look
-like excerpts from a book called Interzone:

The Graphic Novel, which might well be worth
investigating, except this isn't a graphic
novel, and if the writers go to all the trouble
to describe their characters, locations and
so forth, I don't particularly want to see an
artist duplicate the effort. Especially when
they always seem to get it wrong - well, I
don't think those people and those places
look like that at all, thank you. This kind of
realistic, down-home artwork just short-
circuits the imagination, and only rarely
gives us something worth enjoying for its
own sake.

#88 seems to have solved all this. The
artwork was more abstract, decorative,
intent on ornamenting, rather than
depicting; yes, it actually added to the
stories - especially the first two. 1, for one,
look forward to an Interzone packed full with
line drawings of mushrooms, rhubarb,
chocolate fudge cake and the like. The red
Wine looked quite appetizing, too.

The non-fiction was welcome. I don't buy

many sf books these days, and wouldn't be
so bothered if your book reviews were partly
sacrificed for more in-depth work of the type
you carry here. I realize Interzone's reviews
may constitute a kind of public service,
giving notices to books the literary press
would probably ignore, but do they sell the
books? Perhaps they do. Just not to me,
that's all.

If I buy a new sf book, it's usually because
I know the author's work from elsewhere
(like IZ), or I've read some long critique or
interview that gives me more than just an
outline of the plot, and points on someone's
personal Richter Scale of taste. Much sf, in
any case, merely recycles old material. A
brief review synopsis of, say, Womack's
Elvissey might well look like the usual
amalgam of old sf cliches - alternate worlds,
urban decay, and famous people doing not-
so-famous things... It was the interview you
ran that made me want to read the thing.
And I wasn't disappointed, either. Reviews,
in general, don't' have the space to give the
flavour of a book, and, though the standard
of IZ's reviews is high, I really don't believe
I'd miss them (too) much. l

In this issue: the Shippey piece was good,
the Priest and Tuttle interesting, and the
Greenland packed the full emotive charge of
good short story writing - factual or not. The
Connor piece - was this sf? Does anybody
care? - dealt amusingly with one of the big
topics of life, literature, and much else
besides (well, death is usually considered
quite significant, at any rater More, please.

And from death, by an unfortunate and
unintentional segue, to Paul Brazier's
editorial. Interesting, provocative, and with
a lot I could agree with... But what's this?
Engineering fiction? At last. I cried, a market
for my great unpublished epic 'How i
Changed a Fuse m : r edthe Food Blender
in Only Three Days. Fourteen Hours and
Twenty-Seven Minutes Flat? Vet things have
moved on since then. "Let s use science
fiction to digest the informal; :r
revolution..." This sounds alarmingly like ah
those claims that science fiction must be
good for us since it encourages young kids
to study science idoes it? There s a t;g big
difference between sf science ar.d your
Physics homework. I'm quite surer

Certainly, sf can help us get tc gnus with
things. It can deal with the relationship
between ourselves and the technology we
use, which nowadays so few of us tar.
understand (I'm typing this on a borrowed
PC. How does it work? I've no idea. The
typewriter, I just about managed to grasp I
mean, it had these moving parts., i. The
widespread nature of that technology
though, means that its province is re tr.ger
just sf's. Mainstream literature car. take
technology head-on, as well - and not jus:
in the techno-thrillers that so obviously abut
on sf territory. Look at Baker's Vox a rove!
about people talking sex over the telephore
Regardless of its merits, that surely says as
much about relations between people ar.d
technology as anything that William
Gibson's ever done.

As for "extrapolation” and "if this goes on..."

Well, maybe the piece in IZ #88 that

- ideal (and, to

m " £ - - issue) is the

Ryma- g:e:e Fear Scare for the
Unexpected* It s oerrrrer. showing a
potential rais'd r'it mi: rration
revolution, where a vomer s performance -
right down to bccY.y funciros - can be
monitore: and crate
that his whole career oar sraro fall by
how much sweat he gives off :r a single,
vital meeting (OK. so 1 m paraphrasing -
apologies to the author). Do we believe that
this will happen? Probably not. Are we
intended to believe it? I don t thirk so.
Rather, I think Ryman's story is attempting
to point up the pressure many people - even
in comparatively lowly jobs - are under
these days to achieve. This is not
extrapolation. This is NOW. Ryman is using
the convenient device of new info
technology in a reductio ad absurdum of the
kind beloved by satirists since Aristophanes

- and probably before, as well.

(Interestingly, an entirely opposite scenario
could have been postulated from current
events: the way that, despite the new
information technology, so many people
still manage to further their careers on a
rich, calculating mix of bullshit, hi-jacking
and bluff - some things never change.)

In short, sf may well help us explore the
possibilities inherent in the new technology.
But at its best, its aims are far more general:
investigating what it feels like to be human,
living in a universe we scarcely understand,
and trying to make some sense out of our
lives... In short, the stuff of any fiction,
science- or otherwise.

Plus, of course, a hefty chunk of
entertainment.

General comments on #88's fiction? Well,
it seemed like fairly standard IZ stuff to me.
Better than some, not as good as others.
Maybe a little bit more quirky, which was
nice. A magazine should take a few risks;
after all. it's got a certain built-in
obsolescence I there's another one along
next month... i and. commercial matters to
one side if a story’ turns out not to be a
deathless masterpiece, or not to find
immediate favour with the readership,
there s surely little harm done. Is there?

Readers anyway, are funny beasts. Listen

- if anybody’ wants to win the IZ poll,

Kilworth and Hcldstock have the formula:
you take an old. familiar theme, one
everybody recognizes and feels good about,
ar c then you do it much, much better than
Its eve: been done previously. Simple, eh?

I'm not quibbling with "The Ragthorn’"s
merits which were considerable, or saying
that it shouldn't have come first, lust that
me ome were .oaded: people like the stuff
they recognize. Meanwhile, a piece like "My
Informant Zardon" - genuinely radical and
innovative very much the kind of thing sf
needs tc push it forward - failed to chart.

But then that's life. Or data flow. Or
something. Best wishes, and thanks to all
concerned with IZ for continuing to turn out
an intriguing, provocative and entertaining
magazine .

Tim Lees
Cheadli. Cheshire

interzone January 1995

CLEARANCE SALE!

In order to clear storage space, we have drastically JnliPE'O
reduced the price on our early back-issue stocks. ^

Until further notice, any of Interzone's

first 50 Issues which remain in print I

are available to inland readers at just MM M each (postage Included)

*Price valid in the UK only. £1 .50 overseas; $2.50 USA. No extra charge for postage!

Also available from the same address at the same price:
the 1 2 remaining issues of MILLION: The Magazine About Popular Fiction,

Jan 1 991 -Jun 1 993. We have stocks of all 1 4 except numbers 2 and 5.
Just £1 each (£1 .50 overseas; $2.50 USA). Flurry!

#30, Jul/Aug 1989: Ballard, Brooke, Goldstein, MacLeod, etc.
#31, Sep/Oct 1989: Brown, Gribbin, Jones, 'Stross, etc.

#32, Nov/Dec 1989: Bayley, Calder, McDonald, Royle, etc.
#33, Jan/Feb 1990: Brin, Carroll, Newman, Watson, etc.

#34, Mar/Apr 1990: Calder,

Brooke, Griffith, MacLeod, etc.

#35, May 1990: Baxter, Bayley,

Disch, Stableford, etc.

#36, Jun 1990: Egan, Ings,

Newman, Reynolds, etc.

#37, Jul 1990: Bear, Brooke,

Egan, Lee, Stross, etc.

#38, Aug 1990: special Aldiss
issue, Bear, Stableford, etc.

#39, Sep 1990: Brooke,

Garnett, MacLeod, Tuttle,. etc.

#40, Oct 1990: Calder,

Gibson/Sterling, Gribbin, etc.

#41, Nov 1990: Brown, Egan, McAuley, Royle, Webb, etc.

#42, Dec 1990: all-female issue, Fowler, Murphy, Tuttle
#43, Jan 1991: Jeapes, Langford, Newman/Byrne, Shaw, etc.
#44, Feb 1991: Brown, Christopher, Egan, Siddall, etc.

#45, Mar 1991: Baxter, Holdstock, Landis, Stableford, etc.
#46, Apr 1991: Beckett, McAuley, Mapes, Moorcock, etc.

#47, May 1991: special Aboriginal issue, Ellison, Pohl, etc.
#48, Jun 1991: Egan, Griffith, Kilworth, Newman/Byrne, etc.
#49, Jul 1991: Baxter, Gribbin, Hand, Robinson, Webb, etc.
#50, Aug 1991: Egan, Griffith, index to first 50 issues, etc.
Please note that issues 1, 4-7, 16-17 and 20-23 inclusive are
now unavailable. Later back-issues (number 51 onwards) are
all available for £2.50 inland. Please make your cheques or
postal orders payable to Interzone and send them to
217 Preston Drove, Brighton BN1 6FL, UK.

#9, Autumn 1984: Aldiss,
Ballard, Disch, Gibson,
Harrison.

#10, Winter 1984/85:

Bradfield, Bums, Pollack,
Wolfe, etc.

#11, Spring 1985: Langford,
Shirley/Sterling, Roberts, etc.

#12, Summer 1985: Bishop, Harrison, McAuley, Zoline, etc.
#13, Autumn 1985: Ballard, Bayley, Ferguson, Watson, etc.
#14, Winter 1985/86: McAuley, Newman, Sterling, Watson,
etc.

#25, Sep/Oct 1988: Griffith,
Langford, Preuss, Watson, etc.
#26, Nov/Dec 1988: Brown,
Pratchett, Shaw, Sladek, etc.

#27, Jan/Feb 1989: Bayley,
Brosnan, Robinson, Shaw, etc.

#28, Mar/Apr 1989: Baxter,
Campbell, Newman,
Rucker/Laidlaw

#29, May/Jun 1989: Egan,
Fowler, Kilworth, Mann, etc.

#15, Spring 1986: Brosnan, Gibson, Kilworth, Reed, etc.
#18, Winter 1986/87: Benford, Campbell, Egan, Watson, etc.
#19, Spring 1987: Ferguson, McAuley, Newman, Baxter, etc.

#24, Summer 1988: Brown,
Fowler, Mann, Stableford, etc.

#2, Summer 1982: stories by
Ballard, Pollack, Disch, etc.

#3, Autumn 1982: Carter,
Garnett, Kilworth, Saxton, etc.

#8, Summer 1984: Ballard,
Bradfield, Dick, Newman, etc.

interzone January 1995

interzone January 1995

THE

HUNGER AND
ECSTASY OE
VAMPIRES

BY BRIAN STABLEFORD

Author of “The Magic Bullet”

“ The Bad Seed ”

Illustrated by SMS

PART ONE

Prologue

As dawn's first light tinted the sky Duval and Uzanne walked across the lawn to meet
Mourier's seconds. One of Mourier’s men opened the box to display the ancient pistols
resting within. The other took Duval to one side, saying: "Is all this necessary? Monsieur
Mourier had no intention of causing mortal offence. His mention of the girl’s name was not
intended to insult Monsieur le Comte."

"Monsieur le Comte has been pursued by evil rumours through half the capitals in
Europe," Duval replied. "He is able to ignore jests of an ordinary kind, but he will not hear
Laura Vambery's name mentioned in this connection. He feels that unless he responds to
your friend's carelessness others might feel comfortable in making such insinuations.”

Mourier’s man sighed. The pistols were offered to the combatants, and the selection
made. The two gentlemen took their measured paces. Monsieur le Comte was not the taller
of the two, but he seemed to Duval to be the more commanding figure. He was said to be
an accomplished mesmerist, and in spite of the fact that there was nothing intimidating
about his gaze Duval found it easy to believe. The man seemed to be in a kind of trance, as
if his mind had slipped into some uncommon mode of consciousness which permitted
absolute concentration. The manner in which he turned to face his opponent was smoothly
mechanical.

Mourier did not even bother to raise his arm to the horizontal. He discharged his pistol

interzone January 1995

The Hunger and Ec

harmlessly. No flicker of a smile passed across the face of
Monsieur le Comte. His own pistol was raised, and pointed at
his opponent's heart, but he let the barrel fall until it was
pointing at the spot from which the two men had stood back-
to-back. He fired.

Mourier fell, clutching his throat.

Duval could not restrain a moan of astonishment. Even
when he realized, belatedly, that the missile must have struck
a stone, he could not help but wonder whether Monsieur le
Comte might actually have aimed at the stone, calculating that
the ricochet would strike his opponent. It was impossible -
and yet, Monsieur le Comte seemed quite impassive. Neither
surprise nor alarm was evident in his stony expression.

Mourier's seconds ran forward, and vainly attempted to
stem the flow of blood from the wound which had opened
Mourier's windpipe. As Duval ran to join them one looked up,
and said: "Go, you fool! Get your man out of Paris. It matters
not that the killing was an accident - there will be hell to pay,
and if your friend does not want the name of Laura Vambery
bandied about in open court, he had better not set foot in
France again."

Dazed and fearful, Duval obeyed - but it took all of his and
Uzanne's strength to drag the man away. It was as if the
reputed mesmerist had himself been mesmerized by the sight
of his victim’s coursing blood.

The only word Monsieur le Comte spoke, as his seconds
bundled him into his carriage, was: "Laura!"

“Do you know Edward Copplestone?" Oscar Wilde asked me,
as he sipped absinthe from his glass. We were dining at
Roche's in Soho, but our host made no objection to the
absinthe, which I had smuggled in from Paris. An Ideal Hus-
band had just started its run, to universal acclaim, and Wilde
could do no wrong within those or any other walls.

I had been less than a month in London, and knew hardly
anyone, so I denied it almost without thinking.

"He dines here sometimes," said Wilde, "but he cannot
really be considered a member of our set. He is a great trav-
eller, and tells extravagant tales of his adventures in parts of
the world of which most of us have never heard. Some of his
stories may even be true, although that hardly matters. He is
the only man 1 know who can speak with casual familiarity
about the hinterlands of Siberia and the Mongol lands."

That struck a chord. There was another man 1 knew who was
widely travelled in the Far East, and was overfond of telling
dubious traveller's tales.

"Perhaps 1 have heard the name," I conceded, uncertainly.

"You will find it extensively acknowledged in the notes and
bibliographies of Tylor's Primitive Culture and Frazer's Golden
Bough," said Wilde airily - although I suspected that he had
read neither book. "He is a self-supposed expert on primitive
religion and magic, with particular reference to shamanistic
cults, but by no means a Dryasdust. Quite a dreamer, in his
way. Rumour has it that he is no stranger to the opium dens
of Limehouse, and rumour can usually be trusted - except, of
course, when it turns its attention to me."

This news was mildly reassuring. It was entirely probable
that such a man might know Arminius Vambery, but Vambery
was unlikely to have gone out of his way to pour out his trou-
bled heart to a man reputed to be a dope fiend. Like most
sober madmen of impeccable reputation Vambery had little

stasy of Vampires

tolerance of delusions born of conscious artifice or those
accused of courting them.

"Why do you ask whether I know Copplestone?" 1 enquired.

"Because he has written me a curious letter saying that he
has a very strange report to make and would be grateful for my
presence. He says that he considers me one of the very few
intelligent and open-minded men in London - 1 cannot imag-
ine who else he has in mind - and that he would prize my
opinion of what he has to say most highly. He requests me, if
possible, to bring an acquaintance as wise and as imaginative
as myself. It is a description which could hardly apply to Bosie
or Robbie, and so I thought of you. Will you come with me, if
you are not busy? The invitation is for tomorrow evening."

"You hardly know me," I murmured. "How do you know that
1 meet the stated requirements?" I suspected that Wilde had
only 'thought of me’ because 1 happened to be dining with
him that evening.

"I was impressed the first time we met, in Paris," he said.
"You seemed to have a view of the world of men so clear and
so cynical that I could hardly believe you were part of it. It is
true that we have never talked at length about deep matters,
but I am always impulsive in my judgments and I am very
rarely wrong. Will you come?”

I agreed to go with him. How could I possibly have refused?
In any case, I was becoming hungry for new amusement. Lon-
don seemed unbelievably dull after Paris, which l had left with
such a sudden wrench. It is never a good idea for an individ-
ual of my kind to stay in one place for long, but I never regret-
ted leaving a city more than 1 regretted leaving Paris. On the
other hand, London was not entirely devoid of advantages.
One could buy a slumgirl for a shilling, and a passably pretty
one at that; we who are obliged by restless nature and the
harrassment of vile slanders to be forever on the move must
be grateful for every opportunity which a city has to offer.

"Who else will be there?" I asked, curiously.

"I really have no idea. The only other name Copplestone
mentions in his letter to me is Bram Stoker's - and that is
only to say that Stoker is in Ireland just now, and cannot pos-
sibly come. Copplestone does not explain why he thinks
Stoker might have been a suitable candidate for inclusion;
personally, I have always considered his mind to be conspicu-
ously second-rate.”

1 had laid down my fork rather abruptly at the first mention
of Stoker’s name. Wilde must have observed my reaction. "Do
you know Stoker at all?” "He is Henry Irving's factotum."

I have never met him." 1 said in a neutral tone.

"1 have seen little of him lately myself," said Wilde,
although I was a regular visitor to his home when he first
moved to London. He was at Trinity before me, you know. He
was still working in Dublin when I went up. My father
befriended him. and even my mother condescended to like
him a little, but he married a girl of whom I was exceedingly
fond and S was never able to forgive his temerity. The fact that
we are now in rival camps, theatrically speaking, only serves
to add new insult to the old injury.”

I was not in the least interested in the petty politics of the
English theatre. I knew, though, that Bram Stoker was one of
the people Vambery had talked to when he was in London; if
he and Copplestone were acquainted, that considerably
increased the probability that Copplestone was another. After
what had happened in Paris I wanted to steer well clear of
anyone who might have occasion to mention the name of
Laura Vambery - but 1 had already accepted Wilde’s invita-

10

interzone January 1995

Brian Stableford

tion, and it seemed that Stoker would not actually be present.

1 thought it best to change the subject.

"Shall we share a carriage?" I asked. "1 would be happy to
collect you, if you wish. Where does Copplestone live?"

"On the south side of Regent’s Park. Yes, I'd be grateful if
you could collect me from the Haymarket; it will be easier to
tear myself away from my friends, duties and admirers if I
know that I am eagerly awaited by a stern aristocrat. We are
expected at eight. I do hope that it will be amusing. Travellers'
tales have become far less interesting since Stanley let so
much dismal light into the delicately dark heart of Africa, and
the steady march of geographical science is slowly strangling
the spirit of wild romance, but if there is any forgotten corner
of the globe still rich with gorgeous mystery Ned Copplestone
is more than likely to have found it. If he intends to test our
credulity, we may be reasonably sure that it will be well and
truly tested, perhaps to destruction."

1 put my reservations firmly aside, and resolved to do my
very best to play the part which had been allocated to me:
that of a man of the world, clear-sighted and open-minded. 1
little suspected what unprecedented demands that role would
make of me in the nights which followed.

2

I called for Wilde at the appropriate hour but he was - as
always - late. 1 had to sit in my carriage for a quarter of an
hour, watching the crowds go by.

The famous London fog had condescended to leave the city
unblanketed for once, and the frost had not yet begun to glit-
ter upon the pavements. The chestnut-roasting season was
well past by now and most of the brazier-men were hawking
baked potatoes, whose odour was not quite so astringent. The
crowd was as good a quality as one could expect to find in
London out of season, but they seemed a tawdry gaggle by
comparison with the excited throngs of Paris's Latin Quarter.
My mood was such that they seemed more than usually like
cattle trooping to the barn, or laying hens milling'about their
carelessly-scattered corn. I was glad when Wilde finally con-
sented to appear.

As we bowled along Regent Street, Wilde lost himself in
some interminable anecdote, and for once his brilliance
seemed slightly off-key, but he was in such good heart that he
slowly roused me from my torpor of indolence. By the time we
reached the fringes of the park 1 was ready to face the chal-'
lenge of the long winter night. Inevitably, "we were the last to
arrive, although my coachman had contrived" to ' make up
some of the time we had lost by showing Ms usual scant
regard for the convenience of other road-users.

Wilde's enthusiasm seemed to falter slightly when he saw '
the remainder of the company gathered in Copplestone's
waiting-room. He wondered aloud what judgments had been
made of their intelligence by way of polite enticement, but he
hastened to introduce me to Copplestone.

Mercifully, the professor showed no flicker of recognition at
the mention of my name.

Copplestone was a tall, gaunt man who had doubtless
been more solidly-built in his younger days but seemed to
find the advancing years uncommonly burdensome. His com-
plexion seented' curiously jaundiced and his handshake was
far fforrrfirm. Politeness forbade me from saying so but he
really 'did n'bt lo'bk Well, 'and Lwondered whether he ought to
have postponed his story-telling until he had recovered more

of his colour and strength.

I had to concur with Wilde's unvoiced judgment that our fel-
low-guests did not appear at first glance to be a coterie of the
most intelligent and open-minded men in England. They
seemed, in fact, to comprise an assembly of eccentrics - but
there were probably some among them who felt that Wilde
and I increased the bizarrerie of the gathering. Wilde proved,
once he had removed his coat, to be dressed as flamboyantly
as usual, although the green carnation in his lapel was made
of silk and crepe paper. Being a foreigner, and a Count to boot,

1 needed no artificial aids to appear exotic in English eyes.

While Copplestone introduced me to the others I searched
anxiously for any sign or symptom which might testify to the
arrival in London of scurrilous gossip, but there was nothing.
If any of them had heard of the Mourier affair they were mod-
els of discretion.

The first man to whom I was presented was a stout and
stolid doctor who had served in India. He seemed a man of
common sense rather than exceptional cleverness, but he was
the only man present who had been long acquainted with
Copplestone, who referred to him as an "invaluable supporter"
and "unwilling collaborator." I gathered that the doctor had his
own reservations about our host's physical condition.

Like Wilde, the doctor had been invited to bring a compan-
ion, and the man who accompanied him was tall and distin-
guished, though not particularly well-dressed. "He seemed
grave to the point of melancholy, and 1 was struck by the
apparent acuity of his grey eyes. Nothing was said concerning
his station in life.

I was then introduced to two young men. The first was a
study in contradictions; he was not thin, but the peculiar soft-
ness of his flesh gave the impression that he had recently been
very lean indeed and was now filling out for the first time. His
complexion whs naturally pale, but he pinked very easily, and a
hectic flush seemed to be continually ebbing and flowing from
his cheeks. There was a feverish glint in his eye which sug-
gested that he was not entirely well, although he was by no
means as debilitated as our host. It was evident that Copple-
stone had never clapped eyes on him before, and that it was
his companion to whom the professor had actually written.

The other young man was dark and curly-haired, with per-
haps a touch of Creole about him. Copplestone explained
that he had but recently returned to London after spending
some time as a schoolmaster in Derbyshire, but that Wilde
knew him slightly and would doubtless be glad to see n ini r
again. Wilde obediently pantomimed the pleasure of an old
acquaintance joyously renewed, but ’it did hot seem to me
that their friendship could ever have been intimate. Wilde met
so Many young men. I judged from snippets of their conversa-
tion that the two young men were not very well acquainted
with one anther, but that they had many interests in common,
including biological science. Both had now chosen to devote
themselves to the precarious life of the pen.

The one man in the room who presented incontrovertible
evidence to the naked eye that he was older than Copplestone
seemed to be in his mid-60s; his flowing beard was white, but
he was still healthy. He was a man of science whose name I
ought perhaps to have recognized, but science has always
seemed to me to be very much a day-time product, and those
who invariably keep late hours - as I do - tend to be thrust”
more often into the company of men of Wilde's stripe. Cop-
plestone did not say whether his title was a baronetcy Or a
knighthood earned :by public service';' he did,’ however, meh-

interzone January 1995

11

The Hunger and Ecstasy of Vampires

tion that the old gentleman was as well-known for his exploits
in association with the Society for Psychical Research as for
more material work.

The final member of the party, who had been brought as a
companion by the white-haired man of science, was a dark-
haired man of similar vocation. Copplestone seemed to think
that we might get along famously together, presumably
because we both had European accents, but it was obvious to
the two of us, if to no one else, that we came from nations
which had so little in common as never even to have fought a
war. In any case, the man explained that he was an American
by adoption, and had renounced his European identity in
order to give his allegiance entirely to the American spirit of
free enterprise, i was not sure exactly what this implied, but I
gathered that it had something to do with the profits one
could make out of the sale of patents.

I was interested to note that Copplestone had invited no
clergyman, nor anyone of the legalistic turn of mind. To my
mind, that was evidence that he had an altogether sensible
notion of trust and trustworthiness. He also had the grace to
feed his guests well, and to offer them a burgundy of very tol-
erable vintage before setting out to tax their credulity. I, as
was my habit, ate little and drank less, although I made a tol-
erable show of participation in the pleasures of the meal. It
was not until the port was being passed that the professor
introduced the serious business of the evening.

3

"Some of you,” said Copplestone, "know something about the
studies which have been my life's work. My published writings
on tribal magic and divination have always been scrupulously
sceptical, but in private 1 have pursued the shyer truths which
lie hidden in the undergrowth of superstition. I have been par-
ticularly interested in the various means used by tribal magi-
cians to obtain knowledge of the future. I have seen enough
to convince me that there are indeed some men who have the
innate gift of foresight, and that there are chemical methods
by which such natural gifts may be enhanced. I have long
thought it probable that the application of scientific method
to the study of such chemical compounds would produce a
way of inducing more accurate and more far-reaching visions
of futurity.

"In saying this, I remain well aware of certain philosophical
problems which arise in connection with the notion of pre-
cognition, and of certain psychological problems which
inevitably confuse the visionary process. If the principles of
causality which we have recognized since Newton's time are
true, however, then the future must be, in principle, foresee-
able and predictable. If the future flows from the present by
virtue of inviolable physical laws, it must do so according to a
destiny mapped out since time immemorial - and if the future
really is mappable, then there must be a sense in which it
already exists, not in the uncertain fog of the speculative
imagination, but in actuality."

The white-bearded man leaned forward at this point and
opened his mouth to protest, but Copplestone held up a hand
to'forestall him. "I am aware of the paradoxes which confound
the discussion of such ideas," he said, "but I have always
desired to make an -experiment to test the case. It seemed to
me, on the basis of my studies of drug-enhanced precognition
in tribal societies, that these magicians sometimes did obtain
true knowledge of the future, but were almost never able to

profit from it. One reason for this, I perceived, was that the
true knowledge which they obtained was invariably alloyed
with extraneous material which frequently led to misinterpre-
tation. After long study I concluded that the organ of foresight
- the 'sixth sense,' if you will admit the term - is that which
engages in the ordinary business of dreaming, and that its
sensory function is confused by other expressive functions
linked to the passions. In brief, our usually meagre powers of
precognition are so polluted, perverted and confused by our
hopes, fears and fancies that it is dificult to separate truth
from fantasy until the event which was dimly foreseen actually
comes to pass, thus revealing the previously-hidden meaning
of the precognitive vision.

"It was evident to me from my extensive studies of shaman-
istic and related practices that the enhancement of visionary
precognition by appropriate drugs could not entirely filter out
this psychological pollution, no matter how powerfully the
compounds increased the power of the sensory function, but I
hoped that it might be minimized if the optimum combination
of drugs could be found. Each of the tribes 1 have studied has
to rely on the bounty of nature to supply enhancing drugs. The
Siberians use agaric mushrooms, the Mexicans use peyotl, the
Mongolians use opium derivatives; I, on the other hand, had
the advantage of being able to collect and combine all these
different kinds of compounds, refining and modifying them
using the recently-evolved techniques of organic chemistry.
This was what 1 set out to do: to discover the mechanics of a
modern Delphic oracle, more powerful than any known to his-
tory. By this means I hoped to discover, among other things,
whether what I had long taken for granted was actually true:
whether the future glimpsed by authentic seers is, in fact, an
immutable future of destiny which they are quite unable to
affect in any way despite their foresight of it; or whether it is
merely a future of contingency, which might yet be altered or
averted if they were able to act upon their precognition.”

He paused, and rang a bell to summon his manservant. The
servant immediately brought in a large tray, on which were set
a wooden rack holding test-tubes and glass-stoppered vials
and a manilla envelope.

"These,” said Copplestone, indicating the test-tubes, "are
the various vision-enhancing drugs which were my raw mate-
rials. Here” - at this point he touched one of the sealed vials,
which was marked with a ring of red paint - "is the best of the
many mixtures which I made from them. The complex series
of treatments to which I submitted the various compounds is
carefully set out in a formula which I have placed in this enve-
lope. My experiments have taken their toll of my health, and 1
fear that 1 may have done myself irreparable damage in the
course of my expeditions, but in order that my discoveries
may be available to other interested parties 1 shall give the
formula to my good friend Dr Watson. 1 will gladly give the
remainder of the compound to any one of you who might care
to volunteer to follow where I have led. There is enough for a
single moderate dose."

Copplestone gave the envelope to the doctor, who dutifully
put it in the inner pocket of his jacket. "Perhaps, Doctor," the
professor said, "You would be kind enough to tell the others
what you observed while you have attended me these last few
days.”

The doctor seemed uncomfortable, but he nodded his
head. "I observed Professor Copplestone on three separate
occasions," he said. "On each occasion, I watched him inject
the drug whose remnant you see in that vial into his arm, and

12

intcrzone January 1995

Brian Stableford

I did not leave him until its effects had worn off. After taking
the drug, Copplestone fell into a deep sleep, which quickly
gave way to an unusual form of coma. His heart slowed to
some 28 beats per minute and his body temperature fell by 1 2
or 14 degrees. His body suffered a loss of weight amounting
to about three stones, although its dimensions were not
altered commensurately and the loss was temporary, the
greater part of it returning when he awoke."

"What a pity," Wilde murmured in my left ear. "Copplestone
might otherwise have hawked his discovery as a convenient
cure for obesity."

The doctor frowned, and continued doggedly. "This condi-
tion persisted for approximately three hours on each occasion,
although the professor increased the dosage at each stage. As
the end of each period approached, the professor's body was
subject to tremors, which increased considerably in violence
over the course of the three experiments. On the third occa-
sion I feared that the convulsions might cause his heart to
stop. When the professor regained consciousness he was very
weak. It would be unwise in the extreme, in my opinion, for the
professor to attempt any further experiments along these lines
- and anyone who is prepared to give serious consideration to
Copplestone's invitation to continue this work must bear in
mind that he might do himself considerable harm."

The professor seemed quite unperturbed by this warning.
"Thank you," he said. "I will not bore you all with a lengthy
account of my preliminary experiments, nor with any elabo-
rate presentation of my discoveries in organic chemistry. As
to the nature of the mechanism involved in the process of
precognition, even I can only speculate. However, Sir William
will bear me out when I say that there is now an abundance of
evidence that the mind is capable of extending its function
beyond the body, producing in the process what we normally
call apparitions?"

The white-bearded man of science nodded. "The evidence
for the survival of the mind after death, and its ability to for-
mulate a fragile envelope for the purpose of earthly manifes-

tation is overwhelming," he agreed.

"Not all apparitions are vestiges of that post-mortem kind,"
said Copplestone, "as my story will demonstrate. The natu-
rally-occurring compounds traditionally employed to induce
visions are limited in scope, and the perceptions they permit
are invariably distorted, but such compounds do indeed allow
the mind to extend its perceptive range in both space and
time. Space and time are, of course, merely two different
aspects of the unitary fabric of the cosmos. Perception of any
kind would be impossible without some kind of physical pres-
ence, so projections of this kind require the synthesis of a
body of sorts, sometimes misleadingly called an astral body.
The compound which I have perfected increases the powers of
the natural compounds considerably, and the conscious con-
trol which I was able to exercise over my remote manifesta-
tion was greatly enhanced."

"You don't care to tell us, I suppose," said the naturalized
American, rather rudely, "what will win the Derby this year?"

"Alas," said Copplestone, "my compound is so very power-
ful that it would require an impractical precision of dosage to
travel 60 years, let alone six months, and 1 suspect that it
would be impossible to remain in such a near future for more
than a split second. In order to achieve a vision of reasonable
coherency, and to take advantage of the conscious control
which this compound allows, one must work in terms of thou-
sands or tens of thousands of years."

The pale young man was scowling. He muttered something
hardly audible, which included the word plagiarism. His com-
panion placed a soothing hand on his wrist, bidding him be
patient and listen.

"My sketchy explanations have clearly strained your
credulity too far," said Copplestone, looking around at the
uneasy faces which confronted him.

"I don't believe in your damned native seers," said the
American brusquely, "and 1 don't believe in Crookes' appari-
tions either, although he's promised to show me a few while
I’m here. I believe in causality, and I accept that in principle

WE CAME BEFORE - VERY - LONG TO A CLEARING ”

interzone January 1995

13

The Hunger and Ecstasy of Vampires

the future might be foreseen, but...."

“That is surely certain," the pale young man put in. "The
future is determined, and hence potentially discoverable, at
least to the extent that we can gather the. relevant data.”

"1 agree also,” said his curly-haired companion swiftly. "The
origin of motion, which was the primal Act of Creation, must
already have contained the plan of universal evolution."

"But what of free will?" asked the British scientist. "Men have
the power to choose what they will do, and their choices deter-
mine the shape of their own futures. The future of mankind will
be the sum of those choices, not the product of any merely
mechanical laws. Consciousness is immune to the laws of
causality which apply to inert objects. There are such things as
premonitory dreams, but they are warnings of what may hap-
pen, not glimpses of something immutable that already exists."

"1 agree with Crookes, at least about the freedom of the
will," said the doctor gruffly. "Even if human beings are part of
some unfolding plan, they have the power to alter it. We were
not impelled here tonight by some irresistible force of neces-
sity, and not one of us really doubts that he might be some-
where else entirely if it had pleased him to go,”

"Neither Milton nor Mill could find a contradiction here,"
said Wilde mildly. "Both would argue that our choices are
real, and yet their outcomes would be known with perfect cer-
tainty to an omniscient mind. Yes, they would argue, we have
the power of choice - but the choices we make are caused by
our characters and. interests, and are therefore predictable."

1 noticed that Wilde did not offer an opinion of his own, but
was content to introduce the relevant ideas of others. The
doctor's grey-eyed companion made no effort to intervene in
the discussion, even when a momentary silence fell.

Dr Copplestone turned to me, and said: "Do you have an
opinion, sir?”

"1 do," I said flatly. "1 hold that there is an inescapable des-
tiny that faces us all, and the universe itself. It is death. Per-
haps we have the power to delay our course, or attain to the
end by different routes, but in the final analysis there is no
other absolute."

“Death is not the end," said the pillar of the Society for Psy-
chical Research. "That is proven; we need not doubt it."

The excitable young man shook his head vigorously, but he
had discretion enough not false his reedy voice in protest.

Copplestone lifted a placatory hand. "Enough, gentlemen,"
he said. "When I have told you my story, you might be better
informed to carry this argument forward." His tired eyes shone
with reflected firelight, and he suddenly seemed to me to be
sad as well as debilitated, almost as if the world which had
once been home to him had turned traitor, and cast him into
some private hell of unbelonging,

1 felt an altogether unaccustomed pang of sympathy.

"The first subjective sensations induced by the compound,"
Copplestone said, "are dizziness and disorientation. As the
drug spreads through the bloodstream the mind is invaded by
images of a bizarre and incoherent fashion. If I could only
train myself to concentrate upon a few elements of the torrent
useful information might be derived therefrom, but 1 have not
so far managed to master the trick. After a time, however, the
flood of inchoate images eases, and there is a process of set-
tlement which corresponds with the formation of what 1 shall
call a timeshadow. This is an actual, corporeal entity, but it is

considerably less substantial than an ordinary body. My time-
shadow was not sufficiently attentuated to pass through solid
walls, although the much fainter shadow-selves projected by
means of naturally-occurring drugs might be... but I shall
leave further discussion of that topic until later.

"The time which elapsed while the good doctor was stand-
ing watch over my unconscious body and the time experi-
enced by my timeshadow did not run in parallel. A
timeshadow’s attenuation has a temporal as well as a physi-
cal aspect; the actual proportion varies according to the
dosage - and thus in proportion to the time-difference.

"When the world about me first came into clear focus I
found myself on a lightly-wooded hillside. The sun, which
stood high in the sky, seemed identical to the one with which
we are all familiar, but the trees were not the familiar trees of
the English countryside. The green of their leaves was more
vivid, and their bark was lustrous, as if varnished. 1 could hear
birdsong, but I caught only the most fleeting glimpses of the
birds themselves as they fluttered from crown to crown and
could not easily compare them to the species I knew. 1 was
surprised to find no trace whatsoever of the city of London,
for I had assumed that I would remain in the same place while
moving in time. Either that assumption was false, or I was so
far displaced in time that all vestiges of the world’s greatest
city had been quite obliterated.

"Not without difficulty, I raised my hand to place it before
my face. I half-expected that 1 might find it transparent, or at
least translucent, but it was opaque, and lined in a familiar
fashion. I looked down, and found that I was not naked. I was
wearing a thin white tunic and trousers, designed according
to no model I had ever actually seen. This seemed to confirm
what 1 believed about the ability of my own mind - without,
apparently, any exertion of my conscious will - to interfere
creatively with the sensory aspect of the drug's operation.
This was not altogether good news. If my sense of modesty
could alter the content of my prophetic vision, what might my
fears and hopes make manifest?

"The grass which grew in the open between the trees was as
vividly green as the foliage of the trees, but I could not be cer-
tain that the difference was in the grass rather than in the sen-
sory apparatus of my unusual corpus. There were a few
coloured flower-heads raised above the grass, mostly blue or
purple, and there were insects paying court to them, but 1 did
not pause to study the insect-life of the period into which I
had come. From my vantage-point halfway up the hill 1 could
see a road, and in the distance the outskirts of a town. The
distant buildings seemed very clean in the sunlight. Their
roofs were tiled in brown and green, their walls pale grey or
pastel blue. There were no vehicles on the road but there were
people walking in either direction, in pairs or small groups.

"When I tried to move down the hill I realized why it had
required such an effort to raise my hand. A timeshadow may
walk, run or jump like any other body but the habits ingrained
by ordinary experience must be modified. Although relatively
insubstantial a timeshadow seems to its tenant to be heavy
and sluggish. I found that the effort normally adequate to take
a step forward had to be considerably increased if 1 were to
make headway, but once my timeshadow was in motion it had
unusual momentum. My stride was slow but it was also long. 1
eventually learned to modify my actions to produce a less
awkward gait, but the skill came gradually.

"1 made my uncomfortable way down the hill. The people
on the road must have caught sight of me, but no one

14

interzone January 1995

Brian Stableford

stopped or turned to stare. It was not until I too was on its
strangely smooth surface that I was able to meet anyone's gaze
or command attention. The people were dressed even more
simply than myself, each in a single garment not unlike a short
nightshirt. I could hardly tell whether any one of them was
male or female, although they differed in individual appear-
ance as much as we do. Most of them were conspicuously
plump, and even the thinnest was certainly not slender by our
standards. There were children among them, but none showed
any marked sign of old age. While I recovered my breath 12 or
14 people must have passed me by. All of them glanced at me,
but only a few looked me up and down. The children seemed
most curious - one or two of them pointed at me, and spoke
to the adults. I could not understand the language they spoke,
but its sounds seemed to me to be softly Oriental. Their com-
plexions were very ruddy, and the blue tracery of veins on their
bare forearms seemed very thick and outstanding.

"Why are they so incurious? I wondered. Why are they not as
excited by my appearance as men of my world would be if a ghost
were to walk down Oxford Street in broad daylight? 1 tried to
speak. My voice was very low, and the words 1 was trying to
form seemed exceedingly hoarse and hollow. The passers-by
seemed rather more startled by my voice than by my appear-
ance, but the effect was the opposite of what 1 had hoped.
They speeded up, hurrying on their way. 1 tried to protest, but
it was futile.

"I began to walk along the road, heading towards the town.

1 was soon in its streets, which curved to follow the contours
of the gentle slopes but were otherwise very regular in their
spacing. The houses differed slightly from one another in size
and style, but the overall impression was one of astonishing
uniformity. The walls were made out of pale bricks supported
and separated by thin layers of mortar, laid with awesomely
mechanical regularity. The houses had glazed windows; these
were all exactly the same size, as were the doors, which were
constructed of the same unfamiliar substance as the window-
frames. There seemed to be only one other kind of edifice
apart from the houses. These were much larger constructions,
like huge low barns, with numerous doors but no windows. At
that time I did not see anyone going into or coming out of any
of the windowless buildings.

“1 suppose that 1 had tacitly expected that the world of the
future would be cleaner and more orderly than our own, and
that life would have become less chaotic. I had expected, too,
to find life more leisurely, but the image with which 1 was con-
fronted now seemed to take all these things to a discomfiting
extreme. As 1 looked about me at the people in the streets 1
could see hardly any real evidence of purpose in their move-
ments. No one was in a hurry, and no one was carrying any-
thing. Although they moved in groups their conversations
were dilatory. There were no vehicles to be seen, nor any
domestic animals. The houses had no gardens.

"This does not make sense, 1 thought. But if it is a fantasy con-
jured up by my mind and substituted for a much richer reality,
what on earth can my mind be about?

"I peered into some of the houses. 1 saw laden tables, and
chairs drawn up around them, sometimes occupied and
sometimes not, but I never saw anyone engaged in any activ-
ity except serving or eating food. 1 saw unfamiliar fruits being
eaten with the fingers, and I saw people using spoons to draw
various different liquids or solids from bowls, but I never saw
a knife or a fork, or a plate. I saw no pictures or hangings, nor
any other kind of ornamentation. 1 saw no books or shelves. I

saw cribs containing babies, and sometimes heard the babies
wailing, but 1 could detect no signs of distress among the chil-
dren who were old enough to walk. If the people inside a
house became aware that I was looking in they would look
back, evincing the same signs of mild alarm that the people
on the road had showed when 1 tried to make contact with
them, but they never tried to shoo me away.

"At first I had thought the town pleasant because it was so
neat and clean, but it quickly came to seem uncanny. This is
not human life, I thought, but a mere simulation of it. These are
not people, but automata of some kind, which can maintain some
pretence of talking and thinking but cannot do these things in any
authentic sense. 1 wondered whether it might be nothing but an
illusion conjured up by a jejune imagination, but when I
looked at the slowly-setting sun, and the display of colour it
created by its effects upon the slightly-humid atmosphere, I
could not believe that this was other than an actual world.

"Eventually, I became bolder. 1 went into one of the houses.
The inhabitants were seated at the table enjoying a meal, but
when I came into the room they stopped immediately, and
got up. They twittered at one another in their strange lan-
guage, and backed up against the wall. The adults extended
their arms protectively to the children. When I had come far
enough away from the door they went out, leaving me alone
with their half-finished repast. In my attenuated form I was
not sure that I could taste food properly, and 1 had not the
slightest hunger or thirst, so I contented myself with inspect-
ing the contents of the bowls by eye. Considering that every-
thing else was so simple, the diet which these people enoyed
seemed unusually rich and varied. But where, 1 wondered,
were the fields and orchards which generated this produce?
Where were the markets in which it was traded? How was it
brought into the houses?

"The people of the house had gone out into the street, and I
watched them through the window to see if they would call for
help. They did not. They talked to one another, but not to other
passers-by. I went to investigate the other rooms in the house.
There were several rooms upstairs, each containing a low bed
and a closet in which half a dozen tunics hung. There was a
bathroom downstairs, and a separate water-closet. The pipes
which carried the water were not metallic. The taps in the bath-
room were mere levers. The kitchen had a sink, but no range,
fireplace or boiler. There were cupboards for bowls, spoons and
foodstuffs, but no cooking utensils. There were three dumb-
waiters whose shafts disappeared downwards, but I concluded
after assiduous searching that the house had no basement or
cellar that could be reached from the ground floor.

"It is all mere surface, I thought. The whole town is a toy, whose
appearances are controlled from below by hidden mechanisms -
but by whom, and for what purpose? These were the questions
which preoccupied my mind as I went out into the gathering
dusk."

5

As Copplestone paused I glanced at Wilde, whose lips were
pursed. "These are hardly brave and gaudy lies," he whispered.
"They are so anaemic as to be unworthy even of a professor."

I smiled thinly. "One could have hoped for a more exciting
tale," I admitted, "but it has the ring of sincerity, and there is a
mystery of sorts in it.”

Copplestone had already resumed his narrative. "I half-
expected that nightfall would put an end to activity within the

interzone January 1995

15

The Hunger and

town but I was wrong. I observed that many more people were
emerging onto the streets. As the sky became black and the
stars began to shine through, the streets lit up. 1 do not mean
that lamps were lit; it was the actual fabric of the roadway
which began to glow with a white, cold luminosity. 1 could see
a similar light within some of the windows of the houses. I
inferred that the light was a kind of artificial phosphores-
cence. A half-moon had risen above the eastern horizon, and
was slowly climbing higher. I studied its face closely, and was
oddly relieved to find it quite unchanged. However many
thousands of years had passed since the era of my birth,
some things remained constant and inviolable.

"As the people in my immediate vicinity began to move
past me, it seemed that for the first time they moved with a
purpose. All were moving in the same direction, as though
they had a common destination. Lit from below as they were,
their marching figures seemed rather eerie. Curiosity impelled
me to fall into step with them. I soon perceived that the crowd
was heading for the nearest of those larger buildings with
which the houses were interspersed. 1 saw that all of its many
doors now stood open, and that an orderly queue of people
was forming at each one. I took a place in one of them and
waited for those before me to enter.

"The light inside the barn-like building was as wan and
white as that which illuminated the roadway, but it shone
down from the ceiling. The building was crowded with machin-
ery of some kind, much of which loomed up to a height consid-
erably above that of a man. The vast room reverberated with a
low humming sound, but there was no whining as of turning
wheels and no hiss of steam. It was, 1 guessed, an electrical
hum, and 1 concluded that the whole town must run on electri-
cal power generated in some subterranean region.

"The queues, which remained as orderly within the building
as without, extended into narrow corridors between the mas-
sive machines, there vanishing from my sight. There were
glass-faced dials set in the sides of the machines at eye-level,
and levers and switches positioned as though for human
arms, but no one made any attempt to read the indicators or
activate the levers. There was a slight pulse in the floor
beneath my feet, which implied that there was more machin-
ery at a lower level, and I could see several flights of steps
leading downwards. There were also upward flights of steps
made out of what looked like wrought iron, leading to cat-
walks which ran all around the inner walls. These were con-
nected by a sparse webwork of railed walkways, which bridged
the gap between the longer sides of the rectangular space.
Distributed about these catwalks, leaning casually on the
guard-rails, were a dozen human figures, distributed in groups
of two or three. As soon as I caught sight of them they com-
manded my attention. Here. I thought, are the masters of this
vast charade!

"The figures on the walkways were mere silhouettes, limned
against the evenly-lit ceiling, and I could not hear a word of
their conversation, but I felt sure that they were not of the
same kind as the docile cattle which swarmed around me.
Their postures were lazy, their attitudes too obviously negli-
gent. They were evidently in charge of whatever was happen-
ing here, although their presence was hardly necessary-, the
process was working automatically. 1 was tempted to step out
of line in order to make contact with the real inhabitants of
this strange future world, but I hesitated. The line in which 1
had taken my place had now progressed so far that I was on
the point of entering the narrow corridor between the ranks of

Ecstasy of Vampires

machines. I would soon be able to see where the queue was
heading, and what the people in it had come to do. I decided
that there would be time enough to go upstairs when 1 had
satisfied my curiosity on that point.

"The corridor extended for about 40 yards between two
rows of compartments or stalls. Every few seconds someone
would emerge from one or other of these stalls and the per-
son at the head of the queue would take their place. When the
man ahead of me took his turn 1 went with him to watch what
he did. Within the dimly-lit compartment there was an out-
ward-facing chair, on which the man sat down. He could see
that 1 was watching him, and he hesitated momentarily, but
the inhibiting effect of my presence was insufficient to deflect
him from his purpose. He reached behind him to draw a long
transparent tube through an aperture in the wall. On the end
of it was a metal device headed by a slender needle, from
which dangled a number of threads. Hitching up the skirt of
his brief tunic, the man casually thrust the point of the needle
into the flesh inside his thigh, and with practised ease he dis-
tributed the threads so that they adhered to his skin and held
the needle in place. He then pressed a small switch set in the
wall behind him, and sat back listlessly. He did not bother to
watch the blood which rapidly filled the transparent tube and
disappeared into the wall behind him.

1 can hardly convey the horror which began to grow in me.
The bovine nonchalance of it all was quite chilling.

"Another stall became vacant further down the line. The
woman who had been standing behind me in the queue
showed no disinclination to go to it, nor any resentment of
my failure to take my turn. The man looked up at me with an
expression 1 could not evaluate. As my horror increased I
began to see new significance in the fact that all the towns-
people seemed so plump and so full-complexioned, and so
curiously docile. It burst upon me with all the force of revela-
tion that this barn-like edifice was indeed a bam, and that
these humans I had likened in my mind to cattle were exactly
that: domesticated creatures of little intelligence and less
independence, who came to be 'milked' each evening, giving a
good yield of the good red blood which they had been selec-
tively bred to produce superabundantly. I understood, belat-
edly, that the ‘houses' in which these 'people' lived were not
really houses at all, but mere animal-shelters, whose plumb-
ing and heating had perforce to be controlled from elsewhere,
by the herdsmen who kept such livestock.

" They are vampires! 1 thought, with a thrill of dread. The
masters of this world are vampires, which feed on human blood.
Nor are they predators which covertly haunt the night, but careful
farmers. They have enslaved mankind and reduced the human
species to a status hardly above that of the goats and sheep which
the earliest human nomads kept."

Copplestone paused again, briefly, as the memory of it made
him shudder. I could see sweat standing on his brow, and his
colour had grown worse. 1 wondered whether he had enough
strength to reach the end of his story - and whether I had the
stomach to hear him out. I had not expected this; how could I? I
dare say that my own colour was as unprepossessing as Copple-
stone’s-, it was all I could do to keep from trembling with wrath.
Had all this, 1 wondered, been set up expressly for my discom-
fort? Was it all a charade planned to taunt and distress me?

"As I realized what was happening," Copplestone contin-
ued, “I shrank back against the partition. 1 wondered what
might happen if the watchers on the catwalk overcame their

16

interzone January 1995

Brian Stablcford

tedium sufficiently to notice that I was there. I looked up to
see how many of the silhouetted figures were visible from
where I stood, but I was shielded by the surrounding walls
from all but two of them, who were facing the other way. I
began making plans as to how best to make my exit from the
building. My earlier enthusiasm to make contact with these
masters had evaporated now that I knew that they kept other
human beings as livestock.

"The man in the chair detached the adhesive strips, with-
drew the needle, and held it carefully while it was drawn back
into the wall. He took a piece of lint from a dispenser and
used it to mop up the bead of blood which formed upon his
thigh, discarding it into a repository set in the wall. As
another came to take his place I slid out of the way. This one
was a girl, seemingly no more than ten years old. I had no
wish to distress her, nor to watch her making her donation of
blood, so 1 followed the man.

"At the far end of the corridor there was an open space
much like the one from which I had come. The nearest door
was only 15 paces away, but so was the nearest ascending
staircase, and standing on the seventh step of that stairway,
looking down at the people who had done their duty and were
going home, was a lone man clad in black. Immediately I
caught sight of him 1 attempted to step back into the corridor,
to hide myself behind the angle of the wall, but it was too late;
he had seen me - and was in no doubt that 1 was different from
the rest. The absurd clothing which my scrupulous psyche had
seen fit to invent for the sake of my modesty betrayed me. I
could not make out his features very well, but it was apparent
that he was by no means as incurious as the people 1 had tried
to speak to on the road. This was a thinking being - but 1 had
every reason to believe that he was no more like me than
those who had come here to be milked of their blood.

"However human his form might be, I thought, he is a
monster.

"1 ran forwards, towards one of the open doors which
allowed the human cattle egress from the building. I had not
practised running, and the moment I began to move in a new
way my former lumpen awkardness returned in
full measure. The strides 1 took were slow and
painful. Confusion amplified my panic, but the
more effort 1 exerted to hurl myself forward the more
ungainly 1 seemed to become. 1 began to fall, and experi
enced a sharp thrill of terror. 1 could not regain my bal-
ance. The impact jarred me, but did not knock me out.
scrambled to regain my feet. By the time 1 had
done so, the man from whom 1 fled had come down
from the stair and was moving swiftly towards me. I
could see his face clearly now. It was paler than my
own, save for the lips, which seemed red and full.

His eyes had a hint of luminous green about
them; they seemed manifestly inhuman.

"I lurched towards the door. 1 could not have
reached it had not my pursuer been impeded, but his path
crossed that of a woman who had emerged from the corri-
dor to his left. She walked dazedly in front of him and they
collided. She let out a wail of anguish as she realized, too
late, what had happened. He tripped, and fell as heavily as 1
had, howling as he hit the floor. Desperation lent me the skill
which I needed, and 1 managed to accelerate my progress
towards the doorway. I hurled myself through it just ahead of
another of the cattle-men. It was not until the cooler air struck
my face that it occurred me to wonder what to do next. Where

could 1 run to? Where could I hide?

"1 stumbled away from the doorway, determined to reach
the shadows beyond the illuminated strip of roadway, but as I
did so I realized that the night was filled with sound, which
came from above rather than below. Having taken three or
four steps into the darkness beside the roadway I looked up
into the starry sky, and saw to my astonishment that it was
full of shadows, as if a great flock of huge and monstrous bats
were wheeling above the town. For a moment, 1 thought the
flying things really were predatory haunters, but they were not
alive. They carried lights to signal their position to one
another, and their wings were rigid. It was impossible to make
out their exact shapes, although they were no more than a few
hundred feet above the ground, but the thrumming noise of
their engines was unmistakably similar to the sound which
had filled the huge barn. They were machines.

"In God's name, I thought, what mad kind of world is it into
which I have been delivered? Sheer confusion must have brought
me to a standstill, for I was no longer running. I was impo-
tently staring upwards into the sky when rough hands
grabbed me from behind."

6

Copplestone's voice dissolved into a fit of coughing. The doc-
tor rushed to his side, but the professor's trembling grew
worse, and it seemed that he was on the brink of some kind of
fit. After a brief lapse of time the doctor suggested that the
rest of us should move into the smoking-room while he saw
to the needs of his patient. He promised that the story would

interzone January 1995

17

The Hunger and Ecstasy of Vampires

continue when Copplestone was fit enough to tell it.

1 found myself moving to the door alongside the young
man who had seemed - and still seemed - oddly agitated.

“You do not seem to be enjoying yourself, Mr Wells," 1
remarked,

"1 beg your pardon, Count,” he said in his awkwardly-dis-
tinctive voice. "I am confused. This whole evening has the
appearance of being a joke at my expense."

1 was startled, because 1 was still wondering whether Cop-
plestone's story might be an elaborate joke at my expense.
"How so?" 1 asked.

"1 suspect that Copplestone has read of a series of articles
which 1 contributed to the National Observer, couched in the
form of a tale told by a time-traveller, concerning his explo-
ration of future time. And yet. . . he showed no sign that he rec-
ognized' my name when Shiel introduced me, and Shiel
assures me that Copplestone could not possibly have guessed
that he would invite me to be his guest. Then again, what is
the purpose of this apparent plagiarism? 1 cannot fathom it."

Nor could I. "Are the resemblances between your story and
his really so close that there is no possibility of coincidence?"
I asked.

"They are," he said, positively. "My time-traveller uses a
machine to transport him into the future rather than a drug,
but what my protagonist discovers in the first future era he
visits is so similar to what Copplestone has described as to be
an evident copy."

1 found this news strangely disturbing. "You have also fore-
seen a future in which the human race serves as the cattle of a
race of vampires?"

He blinked in perplexity. "Oh no," he said. "Not vampires.
But in my vision of the year 802,701 the human race has
divided into two separate species, one of them living meekly
upon the surface enjoying a life of ease while the other lives
underground, tending the machinery which sustains the
apparent Golden Age. They are, you see, the ultimate descen-
dants of the two great classes of our society: the leisured and
the labourers. But in my story, the wretched and ugly Mor-
locks have their revenge upon the lovely Eloi, for they emerge
from their caverns by night to prey upon their one-time mas-
ters, feeding upon their flesh. Copplestone's story is a simple
transfiguration of mine. It is plagiarism - there is no other
possible explanation."

"Pardon me," interposed another voice, "but I believe there
is." It was the older of the two men of science: Sir William
Crookes.

"I should be interested to hear it," 1 murmured, while the
young man bridled.

"Even sceptics like my friend Tesla must admit," said the
old man, equably, "that it is possible that all men are capable
of a degree of precognition. There is evidence that our dreams
routinely bring us news of the future, admittedly confused by
our own minds with other materials. Must we not admit the
possibility that you, Mr Wells, have something of the innate
ability which Copplestone's native shamans possess, and that
your mind is capable of reaching into the future even without
the kind of chemical assistance which Copplestone requires?
Not unnaturally, you construe your vision as a pure product of
your own imagination, but perhaps it is a true - if somewhat
blurred - vision of the shape of things to come.”

“That is every bit as fantastic as Dr Copplestone's story, Sir
William!" he exclaimed.

"Which is," the other pointed out, "every bit as fantastic as

your own."

"But mine is pure invention!"

"If what you said earlier about the future being determined
and discoverable is true," I murmured, "there may be no such
thing as pure invention."

At that moment, Copplestone re-entered the room, seem-
ingly revived and revitalized by whatever treatment the doctor
had administered. He suggested to us that we take the seats
which had been set out for us around the fireplace. As dutiful
guests, Wells, Crookes and I had no option but to postpone
our argument while our host resumed his tale.

"1 was carried by my captors into a curious Underworld,"
said Copplestone, a little hoarsely. "It was dimly lit, and the
light had an odd hue, somewhere between blue and violet. It
was futile to struggle against the strong arms which held me,
for 1 was evidently not much of a burden to my captors. They
held me gingerly, as though my insubstantial body felt
strange and unpleasant, but there was no prospect of my
breaking away. My captors' eyes were very much like cat’s
eyes, with lenticular pupils. They had full lips, which seemed
nearly black rather than red. They were all male but all beard-
less, and their faces were curiously unblemished. It was
impossible to guess how old they might be. Their dark cloth-
ing was more elaborate than that worn by the people of the
town, but simpler than the suits of our own era.

"I reminded myself that my time in this world was strictly
limited, and that I was certain to return to my body .in due
course. From the viewpoint of my captors I would simply van-
ish into thin air. In the meantime, the task before me was to
find out as much as l possibly could about the vampires and
their empire of the night. They took me into an extraordinary
room, whose walls were mounted with numerous rectangular
screens. Most of the screens were inert but four displayed
moving pictures of various kinds. One showed several persons
in conversation - beings like those who had seized me - while
another showed machines in flight: contraptions like those I
had seen outside. Beneath the screens were panels decked -
with countless buttons and switches.

"There were three persons already in the room. When I was
brought in they became very excited; two who had been
seated instantly stood up. They fired questions at my captors
while they moved around me, inspecting me very curiously.
They also attempted to fire questions at me, but 1 could not
understand their language and my attempts to reply sounded
grotesque. They prodded and poked me in a manner which
suggested that they doubted their own senses. After several
minutes of animated discussion their attitude changed. Solic-
itously, they ushered me to a chair situated before one of the
screens, and invited me with a mime of exaggerated polite-
ness to sit down. When I had done so, clumsily, one of them
began moving his fingers over the control-panel before me,
with incredible speed and dexterity.

"The image of yet another cat-eyed person appeared on the
screen. It was clear from his attitude that my image must have
been simultaneously relayed to him. A voice emerged from a
disc beneath the screen. There was a long and somewhat con-
fused exchange of staccato conversation between the person
on the screen and the persons clustering about me. One of
my captors began signalling to me furiously, gesturing with
his hand in front of his mouth. I inferred that he wanted me to
speak, and I did so, haltingly at first but more fluently as he
encouraged me to continue. I said that my name was Copple-
stone, and pointed at my chest in order to make my meaning

interzone January 1995

Brian Stableford

clear. I then tried to give some account of the experiment
which had brought me here. Whenever 1 hesitated, my inter-
rogator-in-chief resumed his urgent signing.

"Just as I had mastered the art of walking by dint of practis-
ing, so my speech improved by degrees. Within a few minutes
1 was enunciating clearly enough, although my voice still
sounded unreasonably deep and slow. After some 12 or 15
minutes the one who had taken charge held up his hand. He
then began playing with the control-board again. After a few
moments, I heard the sound of my own voice emerging from
the speaker. 1 winced at the uncouth tone. Embarrassment
left me little space to wonder at the fact that my words had
been so accurately recorded - and my wonderment was ban-
ished entirely when the recording was interrupted by another
voice, which said: 'Anglish. Is Anglish.’

"I looked up at the image of the man on the screen, but he
was not speaking. Like me, he was listening - but he was look-
ing at me eagerly, avid for some response. The voice which
had spoken was as hollow and hoarse and distorted as mine,
but that was presumably mere imitation. 'English,' I said, cor-
recting the pronunciation. 'The language is English.'

"The words were immediately repeated back to me. The
voice, I realized, was an echo of my own, presumably pro-
duced by a machine which, with the resources 1 had provided,
had contrived to identify the language which I spoke. That was
the moment when it finally came home to me what resources
these people had - and made me wonder whether they were
invaders from some other world who had conquered, subdued
and made prey of mankind. The man on the screen spoke, and
there was a brief pause before what I assume to be a transla-
tion of his words emerged in English from the speaker: 'We
understand,' he said. 'Your language is preserved in the mem-
ory banks. Where have you come from?’

"'My name is Copplestone,' I repeated. 'I am a timeshadow.
My own body lies unconscious.. .'' 1 intended to say in the city
of London, in the gear 1 895, but I never got the chance
'"What is timeshadow?' demanded the other, sharply.
'Explain!'

'"1 am a man of the past,' I said. 'Your world is my future;
this timeshadow is the means by which 1 can look into it.’

"This was translated, but the person on the screen seemed
deeply confused. He uttered a single brief syllable, which the
machine rendered into English as: 'Impossible.'

"'As you can see,’ 1 retorted, stiffly 'it is not impossible. 1 am
here. What kind of man are you?'

"'No man,' replied the other, with apparent contempt, as
soon as the machine had translated my words. 'We are overmen.’
"It was my turn to say: ‘What are overmen? Explain!'

"It was, 1 think, the translation machine itself that
responded, not the man on the screen. 'Members of dominant
species,' it said. 'End-products of earthly evolution.’

"‘What year is this?' J asked. 'How long has it been since mg
kind were emperors of the earth? How many thousands of
years?.’

"The man on the screen - or, rather,, the overman on the
screen - shook his head in bewilderment. I took what further
comfort I could from the fact that whatever technical miracles
were his to command, the science of casting a timeshadow
did not seem to be among them.

'"1 came to this world,’ 1 said, 'to see what time would make
of Homo sapiens, man the wise. I came to see what triumphs
and glories .lay in store for my own kind. If the earth has
passed into the care of overmen who use their fellows as cattle

and milk them of their life-blood, then the news which I must
carry back with me is dire and terrible.' I added, as my resolu-
tion faltered: '1 must hope, 1 suppose, that this is nothing but
an opium-dream.'

"While he waited for this speech to be translated the per-
son on the screen grew much more thoughtful. When he
replied, he spoke in a level tone which the translation-
machine reproduced. 'The lovers of daylight are not our kind,
not our fellows. In the long-gone days before they became our
docile herds, they were our deadliest enemies. Is that truly
what you are: a wild and savage man from the dawn of his-
tory?’ It seemed that the translation machine was having
some slight trouble with the concept man.

"'Some of the men of my time are wild and savage,' I told
him. 'Some, it is said, still have the cannibal habit, but 1 am a
civilized...'

"I intended to say far more but the world was turning to
mist around me, dissolving into darkness. 1 felt that I was
falling into an infinite abyss... and when I eventually awoke
again, I was all a-tremble in my true body, and Dr Watson was
busy reassuring himself that 1 was fit and well, or at least alive
and sensible."

Copplestone's voice had remained steady, but his body was
now slumped in his armchair in a fashion which suggested
that he was on the point of exhaustion. As I looked around I
could see that I was not the only one anxious on his behalf. I
saw, too, that the young man who had spoken to me about
the resemblances between Copplestone's tale and his own
was very eager to make his complaint generally known, but his
curly-haired companion restrained him.

"I think, Dr Copplestone," said the dark-complexioned
young man, "that it might be as well to clear up one puzzling
point before we hear the continuation of your story. My friend
and I have been struck by the similarity between your account
of the far future and a series of speculative articles recently
published in the National Observer. We cannot help but won-
der whether your visionary experience might be reproducing -
unwittingly, no doubt - a distorted version of these articles,
which you might have read or heard discussed."

I watched Copplestone's face very closely. If it were true, 1
thought, then the distortions of his tale might also have a
commonplace source, and the parts of the story which most
interested me might also have been borrowed - wittingly or
not - from Arminius Vambery, presumably via Bram Stoker.
The professor, however, seemed genuinely surprised by Mr
Shiel's suggestion.

"I have read no such articles," he said. "There are so many-
periodicals in circulation these days that I can hardly keep
track of their titles, let alone their contents. My experiments
have taken up almost all of my time these last few months,
and 1 have had little contact with anyone save for my servants
and Dr Watson. I certainly do not recall discussing anything of •
this kind, or hearing it discussed, and I am certain that 1 would
have paid careful attention to any such discussion. There were,

I recall, some articles issued a little over a year ago in the Pall
Mall Budget which Dr Watson did bring to my attention. One
was entitled 'The Man of the Year Million,’ another 'The Extinc-
tion of Man.' 1 thought them fascinating, but..."

"They too were mine!" the pale young man interposed,
unable to keep silent any longer. "All of this is mine!"

interzone January 1995

19*

The Hunger and

"Yours?" Copplestone's amazement seemed sincere
enough. "I am sorry, then, that I did not recognize your name
when you were introduced to me. Your presence here is a
happy coincidence.”

"It is not entirely coincidental," confessed the pale young
man's friend. "I suppose that you contacted me because you
remembered my interest in certain matters on which your
story has touched, expressed en passant in conversations we
had before I went to Derbyshire. Having so recently returned, 1
had no intimate acquaintance I might bring with me, so I wrote
to Mr Wells - whom I hardly know, save by repute - because 1
knew of h is very similar interests. I dare say that there are oth-
ers here who came with some kind of predisposition to be
intrigued. Crookes and Tesla presumably came to hear your
accounts of the electrical machinery of the future. Mr Wilde
and his friend might well be interested in your visionary
method - although I have had some experience of opium
myself, and I must say that your experience does not seem to
me to have the least resemblance to an opium dream."

"I think he has confused you with Count Stenbock," Wilde
whispered to me. "A man born and nursed in the colonies can
hardly be expected to be able to tell one Count from another."

I forbore to point out that it might be his own reputation
which had led the young man to suppose that we had an inti-
mate interest in the quest for les parndis artificiels.

"My experience was certainly no opium dream," Copple-
stone said. "It was careless of me to introduce such a simile.
My time machine is a compound of a very different chemical
class, which sharpens very different sensibilities. 1 wonder if it
is possible that Mr Wells has the kind of natural gift which can
perceive the future - albeit dimly - even without such assis-
tance. Except that..."

I saw the white-bearded man of science nod with satisfac-
tion at hearing his own hypothesis repeated, but his compan-
ion scowled. Mr Tesla presumably thought that one
improbability was now being piled atop another. Given that
there was a much more ordinary way by which Mr Wells's
ideas could have influenced Dr Copplestone, 1 was half-
inclined to agree with him. And yet, Copplestone’s story did
seem sincere.

Copplestone, after pausing briefly to reflect, began again.
"May I ask, sir," he said to the excitable young man, "whether
your story continues beyond a point parallel to that which my
own has reached?"

"In the National Observer version, no,” Wells replied, "but I
have now completed a revised version which is somewhat
longer. But even if the continuation of your adventure repro-
duces that part of the story, the similarity might still be
accountable. Henley has seen it, and half a dozen others.
There are a dozen ways the rumour could have got around."

"That is a pity," said Copplestone. "It would have been more
interesting had there been no possible way for me to have
knowledge of it. 1 wonder, however, whether our stories will
continue to run along parallel paths, or whether they diverge.
May 1 ask whether your story deals, after the fashion of your
earlier essays, with the man of the year million and the extinc-
tion of man?"

"Only the latter," said the young man, a little suspiciously.
"The extinction of man on earth is, of course, inevitable and
must be the end-point of any future history. As the sun gradu-
ally fades to a mere ember, as it must while it exhausts the
fuel of its combustion, the surface of the earth will become
uninhabitable by life as we know it - and that is how my story

Ecstasy of Vampires

concludes. Men may find habitats elsewhere, of course, but
on earth their day will be done in a million years, or a few mil-
lions at most."

"That is most interesting," said Copplestone, judiciously.
"My account of the future also includes the extinction of man,
but man's successors continue to thrive. I think that if you will
agree to be patient for a while, you might find that any resem-
blance between your story and mine will disappear by
degrees."

"If I may say so," Wilde interposed, mildly, "this digression is
unhelpful. There will be time enough to discuss the possible
provenance of your story when we have heard it all, and I am
perfectly happy - as Mr Wells must surely be - to accept your
word that no deliberate borrowing of ideas has taken place."

Mr Wells shrugged his shoulders. "I suppose I should
accept the similarity as an endorsement of my own powers of
foresight," he muttered, sarcastically. He seemed to take little
comfort in the notion that other prophets might come forward
- an entire legion of them, if Copplestone's formula were ever
to be published - to testify to the accuracy of his story. There
was an understandable conflict between his desire to be reck-
oned an accurate prophet and his desire to be reckoned an
original artist.

"I am glad that Mr Wells has brought the matter of the simi-
larity between my story and his to our attention," Copple-
stone said, "but 1 think that we should press on. If there is no
objection, I will continue my story."

There was no objection. I was evidently not the only one
who did not relish the thought that the business might take
all night

"For the purposes of my second excursion in far futurity I
increased the dosage of the drug by a third," Copplestone
said. “The after-effects of my first expedition were relatively
mild, and I thought the risk justified. I had no way of knowing
exactly how far into the future my first expedition had taken
me, but 1 hoped that I would now be able to span several
times as many years.

"I found myself once again standing on a hillside lit by a
warm summer sun. I was reassured by the daylight, but 1 knew
that I would have to face nightfall eventually, and that if the
world were still ruled by the vampire race I had encountered
in my first expedition I was certain to encounter them again. I
was dressed exactly as I had been before. Although my time-
shadow was just as cumbersome I now understood how to
adapt, and when I began to walk 1 soon felt reasonably com-
petent and fairly comfortable. While 1 cultivated a normal gait
1 practised pronouncing familiar syllables, schooling my voice
until I could produce an acceptable version of the English lan-
guage. 1 did not suppose for an instant that anyone 1 met
might be able to understand any words I spoke, but I wanted
to avoid the embarrassment of seeming stupidly inarticulate.

"After ten or 12 minutes I became aware of the fact that a
particular insect, about the size of a house-fly, was always
close to my head. I tried to shoo it away, but it evaded my
flapping hand, and circled around just beyond my reach.
When 1 walked faster, the insect accelerated. I could not see it
with perfect clarity because it was perpetually on the move,
but it obviously was not a fly or bee. In the end, I decided to
ignore the creature. I came to a sluggish and murky stream,
and turned to walk along its bank. 1 followed the course of the
meandering stream until 1 came to the rim of a little waterfall,
where it tumbled into a pool some five feet below. There I saw

20

interzone January 1995

Brian Stableford

a strange figure kneeling to drink from the pool. To my aston-
ishment, 1 saw that it was a satyr: a male creature with the
torso and belly of a man and the hindquarters of a goat.

"The creature's head was very hairy, and two small horns
projected from his forehead. The only thing which did not
quite match the classical image of a satyr was his feet, which
were more massive than a goat's although they seemed as
horny as hooves. He was slight of stature and slender in the
body, but his face somehow gave the impression of extreme
age. How can this be the future? 1 asked myself. Jt could not even
be the past, into which I might have slipped had my timeshadow
been displaced in the wrong direction, for satyrs are figments of the
human imagination: creatures born of superstitious fantasy. To
encounter fauns as well as vampires is surely proof positive that all
this is a mere dream. My disappointment was, however, allevi-
ated by curiosity. Well, I thought, If I am removed to Hesiod's
Age of Gold, I must make the most of it.

"I must have been staring at the creature for ten seconds
before he suddenly became aware of my presence and turned
to look up at me. I could not easily read his expression, so 1
could not tell how astonished he might be by the sight of me,
but at least he did not start with alarm and flee in panic. He
stood up slowly, and stared at me as steadily as 1 was staring
at him. Then he threw back his head and uttered a loud
sound, which seemed far less human than his head or legs - a
sound resembling the note of some huge musical instrument
like a church organ. 1 quickly realized that the cry must have
been a summons, or at least an invitation. From the trees
around the clearing other figures appeared.

"In Greek myth, if I remember rightly, fauns and satyrs were
exclusively male, and their chief delight was the pursuit of
delicately human-seeming nymphs. Here, though, there were
females of the species too, and children. The females
were less shaggy in the shanks, and the hair on their
heads was less coarse, but no one seeing them in
daylight could possibly have mistaken them for
humans. Within the space of a few minutes a com-
pany of 13 gathered, five of which were little ones.

They did not menace me in any way. Like the one who
had summmoned them, they simply stared, with frank
curiosity. I scrambled down the bank. At the bottom,
which I reached rather too hurriedly, I sprawled in a
most ungainly fashion. 1 was not winded, but I could not
immediately rise, and one of the fauns approached me ten-
tatively, his hand outstretched. I took it, and he helped me ;
up. I was a foot taller than he, but he was very strong.

"Thank you,' 1 said, letting go of his slender, warm fin-
gers. The sound of my voice, so different from his own,
did not alarm him. He continued to stare up into my
eyes, so intently that I wished I could read his unhuman
expression.

"The bushes parted again, and another creature came
out. This one was of another kind. He was much taller than
the dwarfish fauns, and far more manlike in the face, but as
his hindquarters emerged from the undergrowth which at
first concealed them 1 saw that he too was only half-
human. He was a centaur of sorts, although his lower
body did not much resemble that of a horse; it was
more like that of a sleek brown bear. Like all the rest he
.stood still and stared at me from a distance, reaching
up with an oddly delicate hand to stroke his lank brown

manlike, nor did it resemble the whinnying of a horse; again,
it was like a series of profound notes sounded by a musical
instrument. The faun replied, but 1 cannot say whether their
speech was meaningful.

"Again the thought occurred to me that perhaps I had made
a mistake and cast my timeshadow into the distant past,
before the race of men came into being, and that my mind
had seen fit to populate its emptiness according to the imagi-
nation of the first story-tellers. Then I wondered whether the
images of the past which ancient societies possessed might
have been based on misinterpretations of the glimpses of the
distant future which their seers had caught. The most gifted
among their priest-magicians must always have had the
power to journey into the farther reaches of time, but they
had never been able to stabilize their timeshadows as 1 had
contrived to do. It was easily understandable that those
ancient visionaries had located the Golden Age in the past
rather than the future, and made it part of their fantasies of
Creation and Descent. This notion raised my spirits. 1 became
convinced once more that I was in an actual future, perhaps
the one and only future of destiny. But was there more to this
future than gentle and uncommunicative chimeras? Had I any
chance of finding out what had happened during the gulf of
time which separated this seemingly-happy era from that in
which vampires had ruled the world?

"Impulsively, I stepped towards the centaur, and reached
out my hand as though to clasp his. He did not shy away, but
nor did he reach out in friendship. His face showed no
detectable expression. He is an animal, I thought, despite his
human features, but he does not fear me! Either he is perfectly

beard. Then he spoke, or seemed to speak, to the satyr who

had sounded the summons. His voice was not in the least “he too was half-hum aw

interzone January 1995

21

The Hunger and E

22

cstasy of Vampires

"'Cop-ple-stone!' said the monster, laboriously. 'Cop-ple-
stone!'"

8

"Had my anxiety been capable of increase, the fact that the
monster ..could pronounce my name might have sent yet
another thrill of terror coursing through my attenuated form,
but my distress was absolute. But as time passed without my
being rent or crushed by those metallic hands, puzzlement
gradually took command of my thoughts and drove panic out,

. THow do you know my name?' I demanded. ‘Can you read
my thoughts?'

"The golem waved its arm in what seemed to be a negative
gesture.

'"Gopplestone,' it said, speaking with a little more assur-
ance now that it had heard my reply. ‘Are you Copplestone?’
"'That is my name, 1 1 said. How do you know it?' The golem
took a step towards me, but I did not flinch; by speaking to it 1
had accepted it as a thinking being. It reached out again, and
this time I took its hand. It felt as hard as polished metal, but
was not cold. I had the impression that it was very strong. The
tiny things which had combined to make it had knitted
together perfectly to, make a single seamless body.

“'Thank you,' I said, as i came to my feet. 'What are you?’

"It did not reply. I stood face to face with it now, and I
looked into its eyes. They were black orbs, of a subtly different
texture from the surrounding bronze, infinitely more alien
than the eyes of the faun or the eyes of the centaur. Its cheeks
were contoured like a man's, although i could not believe that
there were similar muscles beneath the outer tegument, and
it had a nose of sorts. Its mouth was a black slit.

'"Copplestone,’ it said, yet again, ‘You are Copplestone.’

How do you know me?' 1 countered. 1 wondered whether
something as strange as this automaton made of -insects
could be a product of my own fevered imagination.

"The golem opened its arms wide, as if to embrace me.
'Come,' it said,

"'Where to?' 1 asked - but the golem did not want me to go
with it; it merely wanted me to step into its embrace. When 1
would not do so, it stepped forward to take me. Its countless
units came apart again, but it did not break up into a flying
swarm; instead, it flowed around and over me, enclosing me. It
formed a new body around my own, fitting itself about me like
a suit of living armour - but it had the courtesy, or the com-
mon sense, to leave my face uncovered. I could breathe and I
could see: ...

"I moved, not by my own volition but according to the will
of the entity which enclosed me. It began to run, swiftly accel-
erating ,1;h pace to a sprint. Had I tried to achieve such a
velocity using the ghostly muscles of my timeshadow it would
have required enormous effort, but because the motive force
was provided by my captor I felt for the first time that 1 really
was a kind of phantom, lighter than the air. Thus cocooned, I
was taken through the forest for many a mile, but we came
before very long to plearing where stood a huge iron mast, a
number of low huts, and several strange machines with
rounded bodies and long tails, each with four long horizontal
vanes on top and four much smaller ones arranged vertically
at the extremity of the tail.

"I expected to be taken to one of the huts, but I was'
brought instead to one of these machines. My suit of armour
opened a hatch in the belly of one of them, and climbed in. It

tame or he thinks me one of his own kind, a freakish cousin. I
stepped back so that I could look at all the assembled crowd. I
raised my arms, palms open, in a gesture which was intended
to signal farewell and reassurance. I felt a slight thrill of tri-
umph as they copied me. With the sole exception of the tini-
est child, they raised their arms exactly as I had done. Their
imitation suggested to me a kind of kinship which ran far
deeper than any partial similarity of form.

"At that moment, however, 1 was reminded once again of
the insect which had kept close company with me since my
arrival. It now descended to fly around my head, buzzing more
loudly than before - and it was no longer alone. Within sec-
onds there were a dozen of the tiny flying things, and then
hundreds. I flapped my arms reflexively, and although 1 half-
closed my eyes against the imagined assault I saw that the
satyrs and the centaur had similarly began to swat the air.
This time their gestures were not mere imitation; the hollow
was beset by a coalescing cloud, and the air itself seemed to
be abuzz with all-pervading sound.The centaur and his com-
panions turned to run away, possessed by a panic which the
sight of me had failed to induce. They ran away from the
stream, into the depths of the wood, but I ran a different way.

"I, and I alone, was pursued by the swarm. It was as difficult
to run in this world as it had been in the earlier one, and I
knew immediately that I could not possibly outrun the tiny
things which buzzed around my head, but my fear was unrea-
soning. I must have blundered on for several hundred yards
before I caught my foot upon a trailing root and stumbled. I
fell to my knees, still flailing my arms. It seemed that my flail-
ing was not without effect, for there were not so many of the
insects about my head now. They were moving ahead of me,
as though to anticipate the resumption of my headlong flight,
and I cursed their apparent determination to block my way.
While I remained where I was, trying hard to catch my breath, 1
saw that the whole vast swarm was now coming together. The
vague cloud began to take on a definite shape, which became
ever more distinct.

"As 1 lowered my arms I saw that the shape which the cloud
of insects was assuming was approximately human. While I
watched, more astonished than before, it seemed that they
ceased to be insects at all, and became the cells of an upright
body: an animate bronze statue, its surface as smooth as silk.
My terror did not abate; I could not conceive that any being
supernaturally distilled from a horde of noxious insects could
be anything but loathsome and malevolent. I lost my head
completely. When I managed tqgetto my feet, I hurled myself
at the monster, striking out violently with my fists, as though
to batter it to the ground - but my blows passed clean
through it. Its myriad components flew apart as 1 stuck at it,
presenting no resistance.

“I fell again, more heavily this time. The swarm coalesced
again into the hideous golem, which seemed to be a mocking
reflection of my own form. It had my height and my girth, and
it did not seem to me that this was mere coincidence. Then, in
a travesty of the gesture which the faun had made when I
slipped down the bank into the hollow, it stretched out a
'hand,' offering to help me up. 1 simply stared at the horrible
thing, paralysed by fear. It slowly lowered the proffered arm.
Then it opened its -brazen mouth and spoke. The syllables
were as deep and as hoarse and as hollow as the words which
had spilled from my own mouth while 1 practised the art of
pronunciation, but they were quite distinct and there was no
mistaking the name that they pronounced.

interzone January 1995

Brian Stableford

was very dark inside. I ended in a sitting position, and my
armour flowed away again, to leave me largely uncovered. I
was still secured by bands about my arms, legs and waist. My
ears were filled with a sound like the droning of a million
insects. A sinking sensation in my stomach told me that the
machine in whose belly 1 was now enclosed was lifting from
the ground, and 1 knew that I had simply been transferred
from one prison to another, from a running-machine to a fly-
ing-machine. The hatchway through which 1 had entered the
machine had closed, and I was in darkness for two or three
minutes, but then light returned. It was not diffuse light, like
the artificial phosphorescence which had lit the town and the
Underworld of my previous vision; it was localized within a
space in front of my head. It was as though I were looking into
an illuminated aquarium, but there were no fish swimming
there. Instead, there was a disembodied head.

"The head seemed undiscomfited by its detachment. Its
features were animated and not unhandsome, but I knew
immediately that it was not a man. I recognized the pallid
complexion, the blackish lips and the cat-like eyes. It was an
overman, or the simulacrum of an overman.

"'Are you truly Copplestone?’ the face said. At any rate,
those were the words which came from a speaker somewhere
above the image; the dark lips moved to pronounce quite dif-
ferent syllables, and 1 inferred that some kind of translation
machine was again being used.

"'1 am,' I replied hoarsely.

'"From what time do you come, Copplestone?' he asked.

"'From the 19th century Anno Domini,' I told him.

"The expression on his face shifted, and he seemed per-
plexed. There followed a long hesitation. 1 realized that if he
somehow had access to the substance of the conversation I
had had with his remote ancestor, so many thousands of
years before, he could only know a little about me.

'"I am Edward Copplestone,' I told him proudly. '1 am the
pioneer of the exploration of the future. Others will doubtless
follow where 1 have led, but none can come from any earlier
time for more than the fleetest moment. Is that why you set
your insectile machines to keep watch for my timeshadow? Is
that why 1 am a miracle in your eyes?'

‘"Tell me the exact day and hour from which you came,’ said
the disembodied head, in a peremptory fashion.

“I was suddenly struck by a fit of suspicion, and hesitated
before replying. 'Why do you want to know?’ 1 asked.

"He frowned - an unmistakable gesture of annoyance.
'Answer,' he said.

"He does not know what I am, I thought. Perhaps my secret
was lost, But if so, how? What prevented me from making it
known and giving all mankind the power to send timeshadows into
the future? Is it possible that this creature desires to know my
point of origin in order to take action against me, to prevent my
revealing what / know about the fate which awaits mankind? Can
these overmen be so worldly wise as to reach backwards through
time to annul events which might threaten their victory over
mankind? The head still wanted its answer, but I decided that
I must be cautious until 1 knew more.

'"I have questions of my own,’ I replied, 'and little time to
ask them. You must know a great deal already about my
world, while 1 know nothing at all about yours, save that your
kind once reduced mine to the level of mere cattle, which you
milked for blood. Why are you so curious about me, when all
the curiosity should be on my side?’

“He looked at me very carefully, as though he could not

make up his mind what to say. He seemed remarkably unintel-
ligent, considering all the marvellous machines which he had
at his disposal. Was he, I wondered, no more than a machine
himself - another golem, of limited intellectual performance?

'"Answer/ he said, impotently.

'"1 am not a fool,' I told him. "I refuse to talk to golems and
disembodied heads, if they will not tell me what 1 ardently
desire to know. I am your prisoner, forced to go wherever you
care to take me, but I have nothing to say to you unless you
will condescend to contribute to my enlightenment." The
image flickered, as if rippled by the current of my displeasure.
The features of the face shifted eerily.

'"Ask,” said the head, emotionlessly, ‘and 1 will answer.'

"I felt a surge of triumph, but restrained my exultation.

'"Is yours truly a race of vampires?' I asked. 'Did your kind
enslave mine, at some point in our mutual history, and
reduce the descendants of man to mere animality? Is
mankind now extinct?'

"'In a time of trial, thousands of years ago,' the head
reported, 'your ancestors fought with mine, and were sub-
dued. Once subdued, they were bred for blood and not for
brains, and in the space of a few hundred generations became
as docile and as unintelligent as cattle or swine. Overmen no
longer need the blood of men, but there was no way to return
the sentience and intelligence that mankind had lost. My
more recent forefathers remade men in the myriad images of
ancient human dreams, and gave them a garden in which to
live contentedly.' This recitation was delivered as though it
were a dull lecture of no particular substance. There was no
trace of emotion in it, nor of apology.

"I was still sorely puzzled as to the origins of the race which
called now themselves overmen. 'If your forefathers were not
mine,' I said to him, 'where did they come from? Were they
invaders from Mars?'

"'Your kind and mine had common ancestors,' he said. He did
not elaborate, and I felt slightly frustrated, wondering whether
the inadequacy of the answer was deliberate dissimulation.

"'Are you, then, the children of the vampires of legend?' I
asked. ‘Were your distant ancestors the reanimated corpses of
wicked men, returned from the grave to feed upon their
brethren?'

"'No,' he said flatly. '"Not that. When do you come from,
Copplestone? What moment? What place?'

"'Where are we?' I countered. The question was prompted
because the flying machine had begun to descend again.
'Where have you brought me?'

"He did not answer. As the machine settled I felt the bonds
which had restrained me flowing away. A ramp extended, so
that I might let myself down to the ground. The disembodied
head had disappeared, and when I reached out my hand' I
found that there was nothing there but a blank wall.

"I stepped down from the flying-machine, ready to meet the
true masters of this alien future in the flesh."

To be concluded next month

Brian Stableford s most recent short story for us was "The Unkind-
ness of Ravens" (issue 90), and his most recent of many novels is The
Carnival of Destruction. He lives in Reading.

interzone January 1995

23

Vegetable Love,

Vaster Than Empires

STAN NICHOLLS: I want both of you
to identify your most significant
childhood experience.

MICHAEL MOORCOCK: Being raised
in south London, the area which after
the initial blitz in the East End was the
most bombed part of the capital
during the war. We got the most V
bombs. So 1 grew up in a constantly
malleable landscape. But it wasn't a
frightening landscape to children of my
age. In fact, it allowed for enormous
amounts of freedom because it was
rather deserted; there were very few
people about.

TAD WILLIAMS: It's hard to think of
anything truly significant, at least in
the living-through-the-blitz sense; 1
had a pretty normal California
suburban childhood. 1 suppose being
read to by my mother, and thus
connecting with story-telling at an
early age - particularly stories of the
magical and fantastic - had a more
profound effect than any other single
thing.

NICHOLLS: / know that for a while you
attended one of the schools established by
the Theosophist Rudolf Steiner , Mike.
What impression did that make on you?

MOORCOCK: The Steiner school
actually shaped my life, and I don’t
think it's influence ever left me. It’s a
very gentle philosophy. It teaches a
form of cosmic consciousness, cosmic
Christianity 1 think they call it, and it
has all sorts of notions about the
higher planes. So 1 got quite a lot of
my Multiverse ideas from Steiner
schooling. I started there when I was
seven and eventually got expelled at
nine, after a career in which 1 suppose I

perceived myself as being a prisoner of
war, constantly trying to tunnel out! 1
liked their ideas very much, but it was
a boarding school and I just didn't
want to be away from home. I was
always running away. It was a pretty
happy childhood, though. There were
some things that were awful, of course,
but I'm not going to mention those in
interviews.

WILLIAMS: 1 have a lot of good
memories about the earnestly liberal
Northern California public school
system that formed much of my
worldview. It's fashionable to sneer at
liberalism, but what exactly might be
wrong with being taught to value
creativity, diversity and free-thinking is
a bit hard for me to fathom.

NICHOLLS: Which writers would you
cite as formative influences?

m

WILLIAMS: Mike, for the fluidity of his
imagination, among other things;

Leiber for his wonderful prose and his
sense of humour; Tolkien for the sheer
depth of creation; Peake for his feeling
for the hilariously macabre, and
Bradbury's nifty blend of horror and
optimism. Too many other writers to
name have had some effect, but those
are the principals.

MOORCOCK: 1 would say Fritz Leiber,
too, from around 1960 in my case. Poul
Anderson was a great influence on me,
with The Broken Sword. There was
some really good stuff around in the
50s and 60s, but quite frankly there's
more good stuff now. There's some
extraordinarily fine writers and some
very good, mature work, much of it
American, being published. I quite like
the scene these days.

NICHOLLS: What differences have you
most been aware of between the fantasy/sf
scene when you entered it and now?

WILLIAMS: Obviously, I have a much
shorter overview here than Mike does,
although I've been reading the stuff
voraciously for about the same length
of time he's been writing it. What's
changed since I've been a pro is that
some of the 1980s trends in publishing
have been institutionalized: the
hardening walls of commercial genre,
the neglect of mid-list writers, the
boom-or-bust mentality that leads to
sinking most of the money into a few
big names. In the writing itself, 1 think
that fantasy is beginning to re-diversify
after a period where if it wasn't
Tolkienesque it didn't get printed.

MOORCOCK: I've got a simple answer
to the question. When 1 began writing

24

interzone January 1995

Stan Nicholls

the Elric and Hawkmoon books. in the
60s, I was the first British-born author
producing this stuff. Unless you count
Tolkien - although I don't believe what
I'm writing is in the same tradition as
Tolkien. The genre has grown up
around me, and 1 was responsible for
pulling some of those strands in. But it
was rather difficult for me to come
back to fantasy. It was as if all sorts of
things that were novel, and had a
certain tension and vitality as a result,
had become such standard techniques,
such accepted tropes, that they
couldn't work any longer for me. 1 had
to find new ways of re-firing myself.

NICHOLLS: Could you try to
characterize the stages of your careers?

MOORCOCK: I felt I had until the age
of 30 to get myself together. I've seen a
number of writers produce their best
work before 30 then really not do
anything as good after. 1 didn't want to
wind up like that! I've always been very
analytical about my own processes and
self-reliant, essentially, from early
childhood. My childhood was one of
considerable adult responsibility in
certain respects and 1 maintained that
instinct when I started writing, which
meant I was very quick to learn by
other people's mistakes. I could see
where 1 didn't want to go and could
guess how you got there. This ability
helped me avoid the route of
disappointment, self-deception and
unfulfilled hopes that left people
washed up in journalistic backwaters
by the time they were 40.

The feeling that I had to face my own
mortality before 30 comes out in the
foreword to Breakfast in the Ruins,
where it says I died of lung cancer at
the age of 3 1 . 1 did that as a way of
acknowledging that 1 had to start
looking at the demons that up until
then had been driving me, to see
where they were coming from. And

interviews Michael Moorcock and

that's what I believe saves you. It helps
you to continue developing so you
don't become a parody of your
youthful self, which people want you to
do; but really that's not much more
than a charade. So I think there are
basically two stages to a writer's life,
two processes leading to writerly
maturity. The first is being chased by
the demons. The second is turning and
facing those demons, having a good
look at the little bastards.

WILLIAMS: 1 feel that for much of my
career so far I've been an extremely
deft imitator, although what I was
imitating was seldom anything as
straightforward as a single writer or
style. 1 believe that with my last few
works I'm beginning to find my own
true and personal voice. Part of it is
that I've been through some very
painful stuff in my own life; and now,
as approaching middle-age becomes
something more than a mere
abstraction, I'm also on vastly more
intimate terms with my own demons.

Confidence is another factor. 1 told a
friend the other day, "It's interesting
being at the stage of my career where
getting published or selling books is
not the issue-, the victories are more
likely to be political." That doesn't
mean screwing somebody in a deal, or
getting a bigger slice of the pie than
so-and-so, but rather that the things
that matter are being taken seriously,
obtaining some kind of respect from
my peers, and - most importantly,
really - believing that I've come close
to putting what's in my head on paper.
But you never truly nail it, I think.

NICHOLLS: Mike, you recently
announced your intention to leave
London and relocate in America. How do
you feel about that?

MOORCOCK: Well, they've got Niagara
Falls, the Grand Canyon, the Painted

Tad Williams

Desert; all sorts of wonders are readily
available. And by land - I hate flying. I
like the atmosphere of America and
the optimism of Americans. 1 like their
willingness to take risks and look at
new ideas. It's the sort of culture I
enjoy being in. Those parts of America
1 like best, and 1 mean nothing against
the other parts in saying this, are the
West and South, which have histories
and landscapes 1 find very inspiring. 1
feel good about the move.

NICHOLLS: Tad, in 1992 you moved
the other way, from California to London.
What impact has this had on your life
and work?

WILLIAMS: Moving to London hasn’t
affected me as much as the real
emotional stuff of which it's a large
and visible symptom; namely, big
changes in my life. Of course, getting a
good feeling for another culture, even
one so familiar to my own as Britain's,
never hurts a writer. And England has
been an iconic place for me ever since
my mother first read me things like The
Wind in the Willows. A friend said to
me some time ago, "Now you'll never
feel truly at home in either place." I
don't know if that's true, but it's an
interesting thought for someone who
examines the idea of "home" in as
much of his work as I do.

NICHOLLS: How do you think your
work will be affected by living in the
States, Mike?

MOORCOCK: I'm not too sure. I've set
quite a few of my stories in America;
and the Pyatt books, for instance, have
lots of American characters. The novel
I'm currently working on is set in
versions of Louisiana, Mississippi, a
little bit of California and mostly in
Texas. So I'm moving to somewhere
that's already part of my imaginative
landscape, lust as an American would

Michael Moorcock and Tad Williams
in conversation with
Stan Nicholls

interzone January 1995

25

Vegetable Love, Vaster Than Empire

cheerfully move to London as part of
his or her imaginary landscape. There
are places that are to you, for whatever
reason, romantic places, or places
where you feel comfortable, and 1 feel
I'll be comfortable in Austin.

There are problems with moving to
America. Problems of parochialism.
Just today I had a very nice lunch with
two friends who are both well known
London writers. They're extraordinarily
good company, partly because we all
have the same vast wealth of cultural
sub-references, and I think I might
miss that. I'm used to being pretty
much at the hub of my culture, which
is where I want to be, and I don't feel
that's possible in America for
somebody who writes mainly
fantasy. Which is probably
a sad commentary on
America. It's quite tough
here too, of course. But it's
not so difficult because there
are lots of us moving quite
freely and happily between
outright fantasy and sf and,
broadly speaking, social fiction, W& 1
without apology. There still
seems to be a fair amount of I||
apology in America. But I really
don't know how my work will
change. You’ll have to read me in IS
a few years and decide for yourself. 1

NICHOLLS: Hemingway said an
author writes most accurately about a
place after leaving it. Do either of you
agree with that?

WILLIAMS: Like a lot of things
Hemingway said, it's wonderfully
epigrammatic but highly debatable.

Are you telling me that Hardy or Eliot
or Dickens could have written more
usefully or tellingly about England if
they had moved to Rangoon or
Teaneck, New Jersey? Who can say?
Some writers may need distance, or
the perspective of contrast. I see
America in a different way since I've
lived in England, but whether I see it
more accurately is almost impossible
to say.

MOORCOCK: I don't know about
accurately, because what does
accurately mean? I don't think 1 write
very accurately about places. I just
happen to have a knack of visiting
extremely romantic locations which
are easily written about, perhaps. It
doesn’t take much to write lyrically

about a place like Marrakesh. Even in
the simplest language that already
begins to have a feel to it. I think it's
more a question of being taken by the
moment. 1 mean, I've sat writing about
mountain climbing on top of
mountains.

I've travelled an awful lot and J
suppose I've considered this question.

I think the more you begin to travel,
the more you begin to realize that
people everywhere have characteristics
in common, and you can get involved
in the same conversation with any
culture I've visited, and hear the same
kind of arguments and petty

V.\

complaints about people.
The attribution of national
characteristics, whether virtues or
vices, amount to stereotypes, but
those stereotypes exist because they
are heavily rooted in reality.

I don't have a very good memory,
actually, so if I leave it for too long I
forget about it. I have to go out and
buy a book and bone up on the
subject. My tendency is to make of
some aspects of reality something
else. My eye will make it do that; I see
things that aren't there, as it were. But
some places you cannot romanticize.

They're so miraculously wonderful you
just can't. They are beyond any kind of
language, so there is a certain point at
which you don't even try.

NICHOLLS: Some writers appear to be
very mechanistic in their creation of
material; others rely more on their
subconscious. Where do you see
yourselves in this context?

MOORCOCK: It's all very close for me
because I do a bit of both. I wrote a
critical series called "Aspects of
Fantasy" in the early 1960s, and talked
about Freudian and Jungian theories in
relation to creativity. I've been very,
very analytical from the beginning
and always had a strong sense of my
subconscious being the important
bit. but I also saw structure as
I being the way to allow the
| subconscious its fullest flight i
i still nelieve that I put great trust
in my subconscious, but I think it
must be structured as wei. The
| j , subconscious is associational,
and what it will do if allowed to
run on and on is keep
associating, and the
associations will proliferate.
There's a point where you
have to rein it in and use it in
a certain way. You have to
take control of it. Then you
can analyse and make
\ something of the science of
the structure of a novel,

'• '• and with that science you
can start doing what 1 feel
1 began to do increasingly
\ well in the Cornelius
H |jj x M. books, which is to take
111 enormous liberties with
PppH* ' narrative while not
losing sight of its
function. In the end, writing's
both instinct and structure. It's skill,
experience and knowing how far you
can run risks and still make it work.

WILLIAMS: For me, I think you
become as familiar as you can with
simple story-telling - and that's a huge
subject to try to master, a lifetime's
work and more - then you allow your
associational, or subconscious side, to
put the organs and flesh over the
bones of story.

In my Memory, Sorrow and Thorn
books, I discovered that if I trusted my
subconscious, or imagination,
whatever you want to call it, and if I

26

interione January 1995

Stan Nicholl

made the characters as real and
honest as I could, then no matter how
complex the pattern being woven, my
subconscious would find ways to tie it
together - often doing things far more
complicated and sophisticated than i
could with brute conscious effort. I
would have ideas for ''nodes," as 1 think
of them - story or character details
that have lots of potential connections
to other such nodes - and even though
I didn't quite understand, I would
plunk them in. Two hundred pages
later, everything would back-fit, and I'd
say, "Ah, that's why I wrote that."

NICHOLLS: Have either of you ever
drawn inspiration from your dreams or
nightmares?

MOORCOCK: I don't know that I
dream very much. Actually, I've had
one or two extraordinarily lovely
dreams, some great affirmative dreams
of going to heaven! 1 very rarely have
nightmares. 1 do have waking visions a
lot of the time. For example, when I
was writing two novels at once - City of
the Autumn Stars at night and
Laughter of Carthage during the day,
both in the first person - 1 got so tired
that I started to write my own dreams.

1 was no longer writing the narrative of
the story, but the narrative of my
dreams. That was very weird. Visions, I
have had - although not recently. I
used to see clouds of angels and
Victorian Madonnas and stuff. And 1
hadn't been in a church more than
once or twice in my life when that
happened.

WILLIAMS: Dream images have
occasionally wound up as short
stories, but like Mike I don't know
much about my dreams. I tend to
remember only those I have during
naps, or shallow sleep on bad nights. I
sometimes wish I remembered more,
but I worry that then my imagination,
satisfied at finally being noticed,
would go off the boil.

NICHOLLS: What observations do you
have on the function of short stories as
opposed to the novel form ?

MOORCOCK: I'm a natural novelist.

Just as some people go for symphonic
works and other people go for
quartets, I tend towards the symphonic
with the full orchestra. It's trying to
use all the instruments, all the

interzone January 1995

interviews Michael Moorcock and

techniques available to tell as many
layers of story as possible. If you're
attempting to write on several levels at
once, however crudely, you need a bit
of space to do that in. Your aspirations
have a lot to do with the novelists
you've admired - Conrad, Dickens,
George Meredith and H. G. Wells in my
case - and you try to apply those
standards to a science-fantasy story,
There's only good in that because it
raises aspirations. The more ambition
a writer has, the better.

Most of the short stories I've done fit
into the overall framework of what I'm
writing, so there's always a knitting
element in my work, whether it's the
Cornelius stories or the stories of the
Rose I'm writing now. There's a
deliberate weaving in of extra threads.
Although I try to make everything 1
write readable without reference to
anything else I write. Your trilogies
make my trilogies seem positive
saplings, Tad. Do you write many short
stories?

l used
to see clouds
of angels and
Victorian Madonnas

WILLIAMS: Because I'm always behind
deadline - it's chronic with me, like an
allergy - 1 usually feel too guilty to
write short stories when I'm working
on a novel. I try to cram my short story
writing - and screenplay writing, and
other stuff - into the times between
novels. So I've written less than a
dozen in my whole professional career.
That said, I think I differ from Mike in
that my short fiction tends to be quite
different than my novels. I tend to
make stories out of ideas, some of
them quite small and snappy, like
Roald Dahl's short work. Novels tend
to spring from broader themes, and
then grow, like Marvell's vegetable
love, vaster than empires, etcetera,
etcetera.

NICHOLLS: Can we talk about the
interest you share in chaos theory? .

Tad Williams

MOORCOCK: When I first encountered
chaos theory I felt as if I'd been
presented with maps of my own mind.

I read all the texts and became very,
very absorbed in the subject. It fit with
my own work and gave a logic system
to stuff that I'd been running on
instinct before. I'd been travelling on
these invisible routes and suddenly
there was this whole delightful notion
of chaos theory. When I was putting
together the omnibus volumes (a 14-
book uniform set of his major works,
published by Millennium], I was able
to use chaos theory and some of the
ideas of chaos mathematics as logic
systems for giving the books a further
shape, a more coherent shape. I like
adding dimensions, and in a way it's as
though I’ve always applied chaos
theory to fiction-making processes. By
adding, you amplify the whole and end
up with a non-linear, multi-faceted
narrative. It's possible to argue that
the thing gets bigger than you.

WILLIAMS: Chaos theory alone is very
interesting - what I grasp of it - but it's
the overall ideas about complex
systems that fascinate me. I've always
looked for models for understanding,
and the more I learn about things like
evolution, the more systems around
me make sense. When I'm trying to
figure out why people behave the way
they do, and I consider the multiplicity
of shaping forces, strong and weak,
and the complexity of effect those
have, it makes it easier for me to
understand - or think I understand -
why things happen. I'm also interested
in the slightly more scientific side of it
as well, especially artificial life and the
ecological development of
intelligence, and I'll be flailing these
concepts around in my layperson-like
way in the next set of novels.

NICHOLLS: / wonder if we could turn to
the subject of cult writers. Philip K, Dick,
for example, is an enormously influential
figure yet the literary establishment
brands him cult. It seems that the US in
particular embraces sf and fantasy as a
vigorous part of mainstream culture in a
way the UK doesn't.

MOORCOCK: I don't agree with the
question. My experience is that Britain
does rather more incorporate. these
things into its mainstream culture than
America. Since the mid-60s in America
I've noticed the divisions between .

different groups. It's partly because of
geographical reasons, partly historical
reasons, but the divisions seem to be
significant. I've just written a grumpy
note to the Authors’ Guild in the
States on this very subject. They're
doing a survey of what thei'r members
produce, what kind of fiction and non-
fiction, and they sent a questionnaire
with categories for you to tick. They've
got mysteries, westerns, romance,
thrillers, suspense - all kinds of
categories and sub-categories - and
there is no category whatsoever for
fantasy, science fiction or any related
imaginative work, r wrote back to them
saying this seemed to be typical, that
for some reason one of the most
popular forms of fiction of the late
20th century remains invisible. It's a
very funny thing. It's as if it’s too big a
field to take in.

I think the problem most people
have is the problem I have - 1 actually
don't like much science fiction and
fantasy. I never did. Most of the stuff I
read never quite came up to
expectation, never seemed as good as
it should have been. A lot of people
read Philip K. Dick and think, "Wow, if
this is science fiction 1 want more of
it!” Then they don't find anything quite
like it. What they tend to find are the
imitative, minor cyberpunk efforts. 1
don't mean the best of those writers,
for whom I have considerable
admiration, but the kind of stuff that
simply takes a kind of noir feel and
essentially rewrites Blade Runner.

Most people don't see Ballard, Dick or
Bradbury as genre writers in the way
they see Clarke, Heinlein and Asimov.
And to some extent that's fair. Because
those writers that I've mentioned are
not genre writers in the same way.

They have not established the same
kind of genre presence, and frequently
they're not so popular with the fans. 1
have friends who read Dick and Ballard
and a few others and that's what they
like; they really aren't interested in the
broad body of science fiction.

WILLIAMS: I think I'm with Mike on
this one. I've always read science
fiction and fantasy, but decreasingly so
into adulthood, until I got into the
field, and then felt obliged to keep up
with what peers : and friends were
doing. 1 don’t like most of what's
available, since it's now a big-time
commercial genre, and must therefore
churn out a vast amount of ... that -

Vegetable Love, Vaster Than Empir

horrible word ... product.

I think most people feel about
science fiction and fantasy the way I
feel about, say, mysteries. There are
some people who I think are brilliant,
and read faithfully - Ruth Rendell and
some others - but I read only a tiny
faction of the stuff written in the field
because I wouldn't read a mystery just
because it's a mystery. I read the writers
I like, and hope people turn me on to
good ones 1 don't know. I also don't
believe that "cult” writers are treated
any better in the States than the UK.
Possibly, since there's a larger overall
market in America, it's easier for a
niche writer to support himself or
herself there.

B actually
don't like
much science
fiction and fantasy

MOORCOCK: I've been branded as a
cult. But some so-called cult writers
actually have larger sales than the
non-cult writers. This is a very peculiar
discrepancy. You can look at the
bestseller lists and see that in certain
weeks maybe five of the top ten books
are fantasy or science fiction novels of
some description. Yet the literary
editors, while prepared to devote
space to romance, historicals and
mystery, have a stronger than ever bias
against fantasy and science fiction. In
the 60s and 70s, the bias simply wasn't
as strong. Literary snobbery has taken
over almost completely now. I know
the frustration of the writer working in
a non-respectable genre. I would
imagine it's not too different to some
of the film makers of the earlier part of
the century; people like Griffith, and
even John Ford, who knew they
produced work as good as anyone else
in any other field but were
marginalized. It's hard to say what
marginalization is, because you're not
marginalized by the public; I don't feel
that I'm marginalized by the public at
all. I feel my public is a perfectly
normal segment of the population.

I mean, if the media want to «

marginalize science fiction, they take a
Star Trek fan wearing a propeller
beanie with a water pistol going zap
and represent that as science fiction.
We all know that sf fan exists, and we
all wish that he didn't. We know he
represents the loony fringe, but the
public gets a very different view.

WILLIAMS: I've gone up and down for
years over the issue of "critical
acclaim." Like any serious writer, I
want to be judged on the merits of my
work, not on the prejudices of a
particular critic. Self-evidently, most of
the literary establishment finds itself
in an awkward position when forced to
review a book that is obviously science
fiction or fantasy. It amuses me how
far out of the way they will go to
suggest that Margaret Atwood's The
Handmaid's Tale or something like that
isn 't science fiction, since that would
make it, by definition, trash,

MOORCOCK: There are individual
writers who produce certain things that
can be called science fiction and
fantasy, but frequently they're no more
generic than mainstream writers. I
mean, Ballard is no more generic than
Martin Amis, for instance. But certainly
the likes of Amis and other modern
social novelists can be seen as people
writing in an increasingly decadent
genre. People are constantly
complaining these days that the
English novel, by which they mean a
very narrow band of English novel -
actually the English social novel - is
pretty much on its last legs. They
aren't the novels people read very
much and they aren't the novels that
are very representative of the culture.

Or they're representative of a small,
dying part of the middle class.

WILLIAMS: The farther along I get -
and it's been particularly evident living
in a town as culturally close-knit as
London is in some ways - the more
disenchanted with "critical
establishments” I become, whatever
the art form in question. Up close, you
see the politicking, the nepotism, the
pettiness and the blinkered inability to
make judgements about things the
individuals in question haven't been
taught about. So I've begun to ask,

"Who cares whether the literary
establishment gets it? Who the hell are
they anyway?"

I worked in a college radio station

28

interzone January 1995

Stan Nicholl

for years. College radio in the States is
very trendy, and as soon as a beloved
cult band got famous - or even just
signed with a major label - they were
crap. That's the kind of jealous, secret-
handshake, only-we-know nonsense
that leads to the worst masturbatory
excesses of art criticism. As soon as
you start playing to that gallery, you're
already lost. I was told about a noted
litcrit who said, "A novel that makes
you want to turn the page isn't worth
reading," and I burst into amazed
laughter. How far removed from the
reality of fiction can you get? No
wonder things like Hollywood movies
have become, unfortunately, the true
repositories of international culture
and contemporary imagination.

NICHOLLS: So let's talk about movies.

You turned down the chance to write the
script for Peter Ackroyd's novel
Hawksmoor, Mike, and saw your script
for The Land That Time Forgot ruined
in the execution. Would you ever work in
films again?

MOORCOCK: I turned down the
opportunity to talk to people about
doing the script for Hawksmoor is
rather truer. I've become very used to
controlling things myself, and I don't
like working in the film business. It
looked as though I was going to work
on a project with Richard Dreyfuss,
who had a specific idea for a movie
and told me what he wanted. I thought
it was in some ways a rather dumb
idea - Philip Marlowe in the land of
Nomads of Time - but I did my best to
produce a good Marlowe pastiche that
would work in the sort of
circumstances he wanted. I tried to
decide what Chandler's virtues were
and reproduce them. It was an exercise
rather than anything I could get really
enthusiastic about. And then the
minute you've done that they decide
it's not what they wanted after all. The
amount of sheer wasted time is so
appalling. And it isn't economical for
me. I can make more money writing a
novel than I can writing a film script.
Because that novel is going to keep on
making money for me in a way a film
script never does.

The reason I wrote The Land That
Time Forgot, with lim Cawthorn, was
that Edgar Rice Burroughs
Incorporated insisted on me being the
writer. It was as simple as that. They
wanted Burroughs to be well

s interviews Michael Moorcock and

represented and the idea properly put
across, and that's exactly what
Cawthorn and I did. It's the only
Burroughs story that has, as it were, a
subtext, and it was an interesting idea.
We turned the cruel German into a
sensitive geologist, or whatever we
made him, so that he could speak for
the environment and turn it into a
little moral tale, which is what I think
Burroughs had intended as well. The
fly in the ointment was John Dark,
who's an appalling producer.

I don't have much in the way of
immediate relationships with the film
world. I get letters from friends who
are in Hollywood and they're so bloody
miserable it always reminds me I'm
glad I'm not going through it again. To
me, it's mostly nightmare. But it's a
banal nightmare. It's very, very boring.
The only way in the past that I've been
able to take Hollywood was by being
drugged all the time, and 1 don’t much
fancy doing that in the future. The
quality of the drugs isn't as good for a
start.

is the perfect
teenage

rock-and-roll hero

WILLIAMS: I'm amazed there's never
been an Elric movie, Mike. Not only
are the books wonderful, full of cool
stuff, brilliant images and interesting
moral dilemmas, but Elric is the
perfect teenage rock-and-roll hero -
he's skinny, pale, depressed, unlucky
in love, but when called upon he can
kick major butt.

MOORCOCK: As I say, 1 don't really
have any ambitions re film, except that
I'm interested in anime, and 1 think
they could do a really good anime film
of Elric. In fact I've done a scenario for
an Elric anime. Well see how that
comes off. I think there's a way forward
in anime; I like the way the Japanese
are going, the best of them. So I've got
somewhere in the back of my mind the
idea that I'd like to do anime with
some of the fantasy stuff.

Tad Williams

WILLIAMS: Realizing that most of my
novels - due to length alone - will
probably never be filmable, I'm writing
some screenplays. I love the form. I
grew up on visual arts, and when film
or television is good, it's as good as
anything. So I'd love to work in the
medium, and intend to. That said, I'm
old enough now that I don't care
whether I ever get the good table at
Hollywood restaurants, or am seen
with major deal-makers. 1 effectively
gave up drugs years ago, and I'm
happily settled down in my private life,
so there isn't much temptation to want
anything besides the pleasures of
creating.

NICHOLLS: What are your current
ambitions?

MOORCOCK: I think I'm very pleased
to have written a new science fantasy
novel, as I'm calling it. I've always had
a preference for these kinds of stories.
It's an ambition to make literary use of
these sorts of stories, and by doing
that to recognize their virtues, and not
simply parody them, which I think
most people are inclined to do. That's
where they go seriously wrong. The
ambition was to write a science-
fantasy novel, and I've done that and 1
think made use of literary historical
stuff without blowing the whistle.

Another, current, ambition is to
finish the Pyatt set. I've got one more
to do, which I'm working on. It's very
hard because it's set in the
concentration camps of Nazi Germany,
Mussolini's Italy and so on. It's very,
very difficult to keep working on
something like that, so I'm taking the
odd break every 25,000 words or so to
produce a short story or something.

I think ambition always has to have
a power ingredient. One is to- some
extent seeking power. Not necessarily
over other human beings, but possibly
over one's own fate. I am one of those
people who actually didn't begin with
a particularly large ambition. When 1
was 17, my big ambition was to have a
lurid paperback published under my
own name, selling with the other lurid
paperbacks. That's really all 1 wanted
at the time. My ambitions increased as
my technical skill increased. The thing
about writers is they have their own
inner strengths and the work is its own
satisfaction. I said this recently to a
friend of mine who was in the
doldrums, a writer who's extremely

interzone January 1995

29

Vegetable Love, Vaster Than Empires

famous in his own field. "No," he said,
"I never felt like that. 1 just wanted to
be rich and famous." I was quite
surprised! It never occurred to me that
people went into this business to get
rich and famous. You get famous by
accident. You just happen to be doing
something you like and it catches on
with people. It's nice to get rich and
famous but I'm sure it wasn't a primary
objective for me. To be paid for doing
something you like is about the limit
of your imagination. The danger is that
because you start to get famous, and
because other people like your stuff,
you can convince yourself you’re
somehow suited to talk on any subject.
There's a tendency for writers to get
self-impressed.

WILLIAMS: I'm just starting another
brutally long multi-book thingie -
that's really the only length it can be: 1
swear, 1 hate long books - called
Otherland. It's set in a near-future in
which the main characters are forced
to go through commercially available
virtual-reality environments to the
places that lie beyond - the invented
fiefdoms of various rich and powerful

people who have the money and
information technology to make worlds
for themselves. Beyond that, as the
protagonists will discover, is the wave-
front of reality itself, where a whole
new universe is coming into being. But
since a lot of the 'worlds' the
characters pass through are invented
by humans, and can be re-creations of
historical periods, or wild wish-
fulfilments, the story will be in some
way more fantasy than science fiction.

I also have Caliban's Hour out this Fall,
a short novel based on The Tempest,
and what happens before and after it,
told from Caliban's point of view.

NICHOLLS: What thoughts occur if you
contemplate stopping writing?

WILLIAMS: 1 can conceive of a life
without writing books, but I can't
conceive of a life in which I wasn't
creating something. I'd have to be
directing movies or painting frescoes
or writing musical comedies.
Something.

MOORCOCK: Part of you sometimes
says, "1 don't want to go on doing this

for the rest of my life; maybe I should
take up an interesting hobby.” But I
don't really think I'd like to stop. It
remains, however, a terrifying task, lust
shit scary. But it's extraordinarily
fulfilling. I can’t think of anything I'd
rather do, or anything that gives me so
much freedom. For which I’m very
grateful.

NICHOLLS: If you could write your own
obituary, how would it read? Or what
would the first line be?

WILLIAMS: I'm going to pinch actor
David Thewlis' line. When asked how
he wanted to die, he said
"Unsuccessfully."

MOORCOCK: It would have to be
something funny. I like Spike Milligan's
"I told you I was sick."

Note: Since the above interview was
conducted Michael Moorcock has moved to
Texas, and Tad Williams has been dividing
his time between Britain and the USA.

m WOULD

IkllOl

The Newspaper of the Science Fiction Field 27th Year of Publication 17-Time Flugo Winner

Every month LOCUS provides COMPREHENSIVE COVERAGE
of the SCIENCE FICTION FIELD, with:

Complete lists of all SF/Fantasy/Horror books published
in the US and Britain.

Advance reviews of novels and short fiction from the
US and the UK.

Interviews with both well-known and up-and-
coming authors.

Up-to-date news - about awards, publishing changes,
obituaries, monthly bestsellers, etc.

Dozens of photos of authors, book covers, etc.
Constantly updated Market Reports for writers.
Convention listings.

Our famous People & Publishing column — with
personal and professional items about writers and
editors, including who sold what book to whom.
A Yearly Analysis of the SF field.

Reports on the International SF scene.

Enclosed is: $ [] New [] Renewal

Name

Add ress

Country

Credit Card Type: Exp. Date:

BB Credit Card Number:

HI Phone:

@ Cardholder's Signature

Subscriptions

Credit card orders will be charged at $US
rates. UK subscribers may pay by £ cheque
(£ rate includes a conversion charge). Make
cheques payable to:

Locus Publications,

P.O. Box 1 3305,

Oakland CA 94661 , USA

For credit card orders:

Phone: 010-1-510-339-9198
Fax: 010-1-510-339-8144

$25.00 for 6 issues (Sea Mail)
$43.00 for 1 2 issues (Sea Mail)
$80.00 for 24 issues (Sea Mail)
$67.00 for 12 issues (Air Mail)
$1 1 4.00 for 24 issues (Air Mail)

£20.00 for 6 issues (Sea Mail)
£33.00 for 12 issues (Sea Mail)
£60.00 for 24 issues (Sea Mail)
£50.00 for 12 issues (Air Mail)
£88.00 for 24 issues (Air Mail)

30

interzone January 1995

YULETIDE

KARAOKE

ip Marlow is not dead. My dear chap, you must believe

Vme! There is no doubt whatever about that. This isn't

J some unattributable comment! You have my on-the-
record word!”

It was rare for anyone to question the word of E. Ben Aesir.
None of the journalists and presenterettes tried it. Even his
nephew didn't want to in the presence of the Three Ghosts,
as he thought of them. But Junior had jostled the December
crowds on the tube to be in the studio of Aesir' s tower in per-
son, when he could have watched the telepress conference at
his mediadisco club in Denmark Street. He wanted to know
what was going on.

Things wound up: the few hacks who were there in person
left. Junior sauntered to the podium, trying to look like a
close family member, there to give a seasonal greeting and
discuss private arrangements. Of course, that's what he was,
but none of the Creative Executives moved. Still, he was a
business man as much as a CDJ, so he'd be able to handle
them.

"Happy Crippen, Unk... I mean, like, Yuletide Success!”

E. Ben Aesir beamed on hearing the Millennial seasonal
greeting he was promoting, from his often forgetful nephew.
The latter felt encouraged to go on: "I mean, like, how’s busi-
ness?"

"Excellent! Wonderful! We call it the Millennium Bonus!
Our figures on Yuletide videos and seasonal spin-offs are
breaking records!" Aesir grasped his nephew’s hand and
shook it firmly. At the same time he gave the young man a
hard slap on the shoulder of his low-fashion baggy-pin-
stripes: treating him more like a junior business colleague
than a relative.

"And the Millennium Xmas-aganza? Everyone says you're
exorcizing those gremlins pretty well!"

E. Ben Aesir continued to beam enthusiasm. “Jesus Two
Thousand is on the road! We've fixed the timing. GMT wasn't
on, so it's midnight, Bethlehem time. Which was my original
conception, but Project Development wanted the Euro-West
market to feel they were taking part in Midnight Mass, at
midnight. But the churches were dragging their feet, claiming
not to be able to install the equipment, would you believe it,
even with our Superterms offer! Which is a shame, but now
we have a big target audience and admarket in Euro-East. I'm
quite sure the original idea was best, purest!"

"S'pose it means the Aussies'll have to get up a bit early!"

Aesir beamed: "Serve 'em right for watching the satellite
we don’t talk about and having such unyuletide weather! Up
at dawn for them! But it’s exactly
what we need for the US market! Of
course, each timezone will have its

own broadcast at its own midnight, and this way we can
sweep up both audiences, the ones who like live Midnight
Mass and those who can’t get to it!”

One of the three ghostwriters, the one Junior thought of as
"Past," came in smoothly: "This way the whole world can take
part in a Midnight Mass Christmas Carol party at the exact
moment of Jesus's Two Thousandth Birthday!” She was a
platinum blonde who had the sort of oversmooth good looks
which shouted "facelift!" She wore a white, gold-belted,
sleeveless mini-skirt which looked out of place and decade
on an exec. But then everyone knew she did vital work on
AesirCo's best-selling "Bodiced Raider" historical novels,
aimed at the liberated romantic and published under Aesir’ s
own name.

Junior felt uneasy. No one, even in the family, knew quite
how important the ghosts were: whether they were mouth-
pieces and processers-for-hire, or influenced his uncle’s pol-
icy as much as was hinted on pirate-broadcast gossip shows.
Insiders knew that little put out under E. Ben Aesir's name
was all his work. There was only the semi-autobiographical,
multi-media "Cellar Band to Satellite.” That was all Aesir. His
uncle now looked as well-fed and permanently youthful as
the waxwork of a 1950s Country star, if his suit was more con-
ventional. Junior wondered if anyone else could remember
the lean-mean and fame-hungry rebel who had toured as DJ
SKRU-J with his partners MC MARL-0 and Dancing Dolly, not
that Dolly Kratch got much space in the autobionov. Word
was, Aesir hadn’t let anyone work on that!

He always thought of Pip Marlow as his godfather. His
uncle's long-term partner had taught him how to get on in
the business this family dominated... indeed, it was Pip who
had suggested he adopt the name "SKRU-Junior."

He thought about how Pip would deal with it, and asked:
"So, what's the problem with old Marlow? What led those
clowns to think he was dead?"

"Oh, he's not dead!" Aesir repeated. "Scum! Just because
someone who's worked all his life happens to be indis-
posed..."

He looked less confident than usual. Before he could go
on, the second ghost-writer, the one Junior thought of as
"Present" said: "He’s having the best case-management.
State-of-the-Tech Precryogenic stasis..."

"Hold on!" Junior felt able to interrupt this girl, as she
seemed closer to his own age; absurdly young to be the per-
son who did the key work on all the soaps which went out
under E. Ben Aesir's name. She was tall and buxom, and
wore a Millennium Party dress from Yves
Milanon. It was green, full-length, very
low-cut, and looked so loose that her

Peter T. Garratt

interzone January 1995

31

y u I e t i d e

breasts might fall out of it at any second. (He knew it was an
original because despite her calculatedly exaggerated ges-
tures, this did not happen. None of the imitations available
from chainstores and carpark markets avoided the falling-out
they threatened or promised. That did not stop a lot of girls
wearing the imitations to his club.) Her crystalslips were so
clear that her feet appeared bare, and she had a wreath of
green tinsel holly on her head.

He went on: "1 mean, isn't cryogenics... I know they mean
to thaw the people out eventually, but I mean, well, they're
sort of fairly dead when they go into the freezer, aren't...”

“No, no!" Present interrupted. "Luckily, Mr Marlow was
able to take advantage of the very latest Pre-Cryogenic sus-
pension. He was worried to find he was in a very early stage
of Vron's Disease, a little-known neurological condition.
Research on a cure is still in the formulation stage, so natu-
rally Mr Marlow preferred to wait it out undergoing a new
deep-sleep therapy. In fact deeper than sleep. His condition
won't change or get worse at all, and if absolutely necessary
he can be woken up for a short period from time to time."

"That's right." The third ghost, whom Junior thought of as
“Future" for his work on Aesir's graphic serials and anime
blockbusters, backed her up. He was tall and wore only black,
a hooded jumpsuit; and despite the season and indoor loca-
tion, very large opaque wraparound shades. "He's left an
interactive personal program, so we can consult him about
the ideal medical opportunity to wake him. Or, if his opin-
ion's needed about an emergency, whether it's OK to wake
him for that.”

Why not have a look?” E. Ben Aesir took charge. "You're
family, and dear old Marlow was almost family. The business
is an extended family, after all!"

"What, is he here? Not in a clinic or something?"

"He has his own suite in the staff medical centre," Past
said. "Where could the care be better?"

Aesir led the way to the lifts: lunior resented the ghosts clos-
ing round them like an escort. This was starting to feel like a
very extended family!

The lift went up. "Past" commented: "Mr Aesir has arranged
for medical to be on the level below his own office. That high
up, there isn't much pollution from fumes. The patients can
have the windows open for unconditioned air in good
weather."

Aesir added cheerfully: “But the only one in at the moment
is old Pip, and he's not complaining about air quality!"

Marlow's office was now an extension to the medical cen-
tre. lunior recognized Marlow's personal Strossix workstation
with its huge screen. Pip Marlow himself lay on a bed with
raised sides, each of which was covered in digital displays
and at-a-glance medical progress charts. Drip tubes ran
under the sheet. There was a glass lid over the arrangement
which made it look like an updated sarcophagus. Marlow
looked pale but not waxen, and lunior could see that he was
breathing very slowly. E, Ben Aesir said: "If it’s a while till
anyone comes up with a cure, well, old Pip's so slowed down
here he could outlive us all!"

"Perhaps you'd like to see the interactive," Future said. He
switched on the workstation and clattered rapidly on the key-
board. Its quite remarkable, Mr Marlow's own work. In fact
his main project since he finished setting up the integrated
computer system AesirCo now has. Unless someone's being

Karaoke

very secretive, it's the most advanced interactive program in
the world. Voice activated, and it seems to be able to interact
with more than one user. There’s tremendous potential here
for AesirCo to enter the New Millennium ahead of the mar-
ket!"

Marlow, Junior knew, had concentrated on the technical
while Aesir studied the market and made sure the company
both adapted to it and led it. He had noticed, but had been
too young and unconfident to comment on, E. Ben Aesir's
gradual change from relentless rebel to committed con-
formist. Marlow had changed less, if anything getting more
preoccupied with the technical side, perhaps anticipating
that health and mortality might begrudge him his full enjoy-
ment of AesirCo’s success.

A menu appeared, then gave way to an image of a door
with a brass knocker. Future typed "KNOCK”: there was a
sound-effect knocking, then a voice which made lunior jump.
It was exactly Marlow's voice: it only said "Come in!" but even
so...

The door opened and the viewpoint moved in. It was the
best high-def graphic Junior had seen. Marlow was shown
reclining on a couch in an airy room overlooking a sunlit sea,
in blue suit and socks, no shoes. He was reading digital dis-
plays which appeared on the socks, though at the moment
they only showed the time. In one corner was a potted tree,
in whose branches a figure like a mediaeval knight had
become entangled. A young woman clad only in long hair
seemed to be trying half-heartedly to help; though a dent in
Marlow’s couch, slowly righting itself, implied she had been
sitting with him until the knock.

Future said: "Voice activate!" and Virtual-Marlow looked
round as if at him. The image was younger and leaner than
the suspended body, than Marlow's recent, relatively busi-
nesslike self. Future went on: "Activating interrogation pro-
gramme, Pip Marlow Interactive. Good afternoon, Mr
Marlow!”

The image said: "Happy Christmas! Or should it be 'Yule-
tide Success'?"

"Yuletide Success, Mr Marlow. We are formally asking if
you are ready to take advantage of the present medical situa-
tion."

The image of Marlow shrugged. Future went on: "Professor
Vron has a treatment ready to begin double-blind trials.”

"To begin?" Marlow's voice was sharp, sceptical, not at all
programmed. "So, I might get the placebo? Smarties? No
thanks."

Aesir said: "You wouldn’t have to enter the trial."

"OK. So is there any evidence about the new drug?”

Future said stiffly: "1 think you know Professor Vron
wouldn’t raise your hopes with anecdotal evidence only."

"So there’s no way I'm ready to start this treatment, lose!"
Future said sidelong: "The program doesn't only respond
to questions about treatment.” He faced the screen. "Look,
Mr Marlow, this isn’t that urgent, but it's Aesir Communica-
tions’ biggest ever event, something you might want to wake
up for anyway.” He started to describe Jesus Two Thousand.

The image appeared almost to sneer: "So it's Millennium
and you've gone overboard on the Global Karaoke Christmas
Carol Broadcast? I don't think so. It's no emergency!"

lunior turned excitedly to his uncle and said: "Hey, it's...
incredible. Can anyone... can I... talk to him... it?”

"Sure can. Why don’t you try?"

lunior said: "Like, did you dream up this whole system?"

32

interzone January 1995

Peter T .

G a r r a 1 1

Marlow seemed to turn to look at him. Junior realized
uneasily that there was a vidcam above the screen. Even
more disconcertingly, the image seemed to wink: "Hi, Junior!"

"All Pip's old mannerisms!” E. Ben Aesir chortled.

"Marlow" said: "I integrated the Company system. Later, I
slipped a little offshoot of myself through the net.”

"I see.” Junior stared at the image, then blurted: "Are you...
aware of yourself in there?”

"Interesting question. I've been wondering about that
myself. I guess I'd better say, that's for me to wonder and you
to wonder. Though then 1 could say, I wonder, therefore I
am!”

"Same old Pip!” Aesir chuckled.

Present added: "Of course, Mr Marlow was ahead of the
game on interactives. This is beyond State-of-the-Tech."

The Marlow image said: "So, Junior, you'll play your part in
the Global Carol Karaoke? Good family member?"

"I think so. We've got to finalize details.”

'"Course he is!" Aesir broke in. "It's just detail!"

Junior scratched his head. "Well, I do want to, but like I
said, it’s not going to be easy to get away from the club.
Christmas Eve is one of our biggest nites of the Season.”

Past came in: "Live broadcasts from Club Munch'em are
always good for the ratings, especially this Season.” She
glanced coldly at Present. She was hinting that during a live
broadcast from Club Munch'em, some of the girls who wore
cheap imitations of Present's high-fashion style would have
problems with cleavage control. Each such incident added to
the ratings for the next show. It was ideal for E. Ben Aesir: he
could put live breasts on TV without anyone saying he had
planned the incident. The question was, would he do it on
Christmas Eve?

Present sniffed and shrugged. It was a very exaggerated
shrug, but everything stayed expensively put. She said: "I am
worried that what’s supposed to be an event for everyone,
doesn't have enough appeal for younger customers who
aren't so involved in churchgoing activity."

“That's exactly it!” Aesir exclaimed. "Get everyone involved.
Exactly what I always wanted! But,” and he looked sharply at
Junior, "I don't think actual dancing,."

Junior shook his head. "Oh no, just the carols. We want to
sing 'Mary’s Boy Child,’ and there's a great bunch who come
in, nurses mainly, who do The Twelve Days of Christmas."’

"So I can rely on you to keep things under control?" Aesir's
eyes were hard but, as Junior nodded, he beamed. "So that's
it then! Almost in the can!”

"Not quite!" The interruption from Marlow's image made
them all jump, though only Junior didn't stiffen at once. "How
about old Bob Kratch? You inviting him? Or is it still 'It'?”

"That's quite another matter!" Aesir snapped. "Bob’s not
been in touch for ages! When I do hear from him, it's all
about some time-wasting doss house where he pretends to
work. He actually wanted us to broadcast from there! I ask
you! Since I told him it was out of the question, no contact,
just sulks!”

Junior said tentatively: "1 know old Bob's, like, a bit of a
drop-out, but his heart's in the right place."

"And another thing!" E. Ben Aesir interrupted. "Bob was
very unhelpful about the whole concept of Jesus Two Thou-
sand and the Millennium celebrations generally. He seems to
think for some perverted reason of his own that New Year
2000 isn't the real Millennium, and Christmas Day isn't really
Jesus's birthday! Here am I, working to put on the biggest

YuJetide event ever and my supposed son's talking trash like
that!”

Junior didn't answer. He happened to know that Aesir had
first taken an interest in things Millennial after seeing a hor-
ror video based on the prophecies of Nostradamus, but
unlike Bob Kratch, he knew better than to air such memories
in public. Instead, he said: "I mean, it's a bit of a tip where
Bob works, but it is, like, a charity."

"Humbug! Not a registered charity!” E. Ben Aesir said
firmly. "De-registered for dabbling in politics. God knows
where people's donations wind up! There's no way I'm going
to jeopardize Jesus Two Thousand by getting involved with a
de-registered charity."

"Yeah,” said Junior flatly. "OK. But he will be there for
Christmas dinner, won't he? It doesn't seem right without
him.”

Aesir hesitated: the image of Marlow seemed to cock its
head and look right at him. In the end he said: "Well, look,
OK, I never said he couldn’t come. It's up to him. If he wants
an invite, he'll have to get in touch and sort it out. He'll have
to be on time and look... respectable. Are you seeing him?"

"I sort of thought 1 might drop by."

"Well, if you do see him, you can tell him from me that if
he does get in touch we'll sort everything out."

Junior nodded. As he turned to go, Aesir said gruffly.
"Look, Bob said if I didn’t make a donation to his damn hum-
bug charity, he didn't want a Christmas present. I said 1 pay
tax to support the non-workers, which is true, but if I give him
a cash present, he can do what he damn well likes with it!
Card!"

Future busied himself at the workstation keyboard. Mar-
low's image abruptly vanished, the printer whirred, and a
card came out. It was identical to the one Junior had received
by post, a scene photographed at the last Aesir seasonal
gathering. The centre-piece was the playpen with the twin
boys, already a little big for it. E. Ben Aesir's new wife Mary
(not his second wife, Junior thought: he had never married
Dolly Kratch) bent tenderly over it. Also central, but behind,
Aesir stood in Father Christmas costume. On one side, the
three ghosts, wearing paper crowns, were taking presents
from the tree. On the other, distant relatives and lesser
employees crowded like amazed shepherds. The dogs and
cats sat obediently round the playpen.

Aesir tucked a 50 sheet into the card, which Junior saw had
the standard message in black ink, and 'To Bob with love
from Dad' in Aesir's hand in blue. "Tell him to forget this
humbug of spending Christmas in a soup-kitchen for losers.
Other times, maybe. But he can't expect to come from a filthy
den to be with Mary and the boys. Let’s forget that, and we'll
have a good old-fashioned family Christmas just like we used
to!"

Junior rode the lift down and hurried gut of the building. The
sky was clear and winter-bright, the sun already low and the
air cold. He moved through the narrow streets of the East
End in the shadow of E. Ben Aesir's tower, the tallest build-
ing between the City and Canary Wharf. It was the first really
big officg,o:verspill into the area east of Liverpool Street.

In corners and doorways, scruby men sold a biggish maga-
zine with the headline: "THE TRUTH ABOUT THE NEW MIL-
LENNIUM: WAS: NOSTRADAMUS RIGHT?" Junior didnft.,buy
one. Instead, he crossed Commercial Road andglanced back.

interzone January 1995

33

Yuletide Karaoke

He could see Aesir's tower dominating the low Victorian
buildings and the narrow streets through which, in the last
century, Bill Sikes had tried to escape justice and Jack the
Ripper had succeeded. In a few days, Junior reminded him-
self, it would be the last century but one. The sun was already
starting to redden the sky and the mirrored windows of the
building. Half way up, the maxivid screens which would con-
vey Jesus Two Thousand to the crowds in the streets were
already in position. One displayed the words: "AESIRCO
SAYS HAPPY 2000 BIRTHDAY JESUS FROM THE WORLD!"

The "Stable,'' temporary headquarters of CRASH (Cam-
paign for the Right to All-year Shelter and Housing) was in an
old warehouse in a street off Brick Lane. It was intended to
smell of disinfectant, which it did, even above the cooking
from the three curry houses in the street and the stench of
the mash from the huge brewery. Even with all that, Junior
couldn’t avoid wrinkling his nose at a smell like a thousand
mornings-after rolled into one: of blankets, hair and clothing
soaked in sweat, beer, smoke and things he didn't wish to
identify. This was so even though most of the sheltered were
out; begging or panhandling the price of minimal Chrismas
shopping. Near the main entrance was a door marked
"Office": beyond he could see a huge space lined with beds
and sleeping bags, and hung with Christmas chains in a style
several years out of date.

Junior hastily knocked at the office door and was called in.
There was a battered wooden desk, not many papers on it,
and in the corner an ancient green-plastic Christmas tree,
with plenty of home-made decorations but no presents
beneath it. Bob Kratch was there, talking to another man and
two young women: all four wore a near-uniform of blue jeans
and functional pullovers. Bob was his male self: unfashion-
ably short hair and no make-up or jewellery to distinguish
him from the other charity workers.

"Fred! That is, Junior! Happy Christmas! Good to see you!"

"Yule... Same to you, Bob. Thought I'd stop by. Get my
card?"

"It's at the flat."

"Great. Look, I've got your prezzie, and one from your
Dad... unless you are coming on Christmas Day of course.”

"1 haven't been invited."

"Well, I think the old man will invite you if you get in touch
to finalize the arrangements."

"Finalize? Christ! I have to beg for an invite from my own
Dad now, do I?”

Before Bob could go on, the other man said: "We can take
over now, Bob, if you two want to get off."

"Thanks!" Bob took a leather jacket from the hook. "The
'Marie Kelly' opens all day, if you fancy a pint?"

Before Junior could reply, a youth who looked about 14
burst in. He was short, hair roughly crew-cut, with red
blotches on his pale face which could have been acne but
looked more sinister. "Bob, give us a quid to get some disin-
fungus from the Pakki. We're right out in the khazi."

One of the girls said: "Knock, Tim!" Bob unlocked a drawer
and took out a coin which he tossed lightly to Tim’s right
hand. The latter nevertheless fumbled and dropped it, saying:

"Whoops! In training for England goalie!"

As they walked to the pub, Junior said: "That kid. He looked...
incredibly young!"

"Tim? He was 18 last week."

"Good thing he didn't try going into my club to celebrate."

"I don't like to go on, but he's had all the problems we get
used to. Dad flat-broke and vanished, mum on the booze.
He's a throwback to the days before all kids had milk and
vitamins."

The "Marie Kelly” was indeed open. On one side of the
sign, Marie was shown issuing saucily from the pub; on the
other, she was shrinking from the shadow of the Ripper.
Inside the place was full, crowds of seasonal revellers obscur-
ing the Ripper prints on the walls. Junior said: "I really admire
you working with kids like that Tim!"

"It's a job. There's no need to whinge about it. Drink? Fezzi-
wig's Yuletide Dark is nice and strong." He ordered two pints,
and they found a tiny table, the last, and stools. Junior
handed over his present... a year’s pass for the club and the
latest Topper Sisters CD. Bob gave a cursory thanks, and
replied with an unwrapped book: Global Economy and Ecology
in the New Millennium: Degradation and Poverty? He glanced
briefly at his father's card, tucked the 50 into his jeans, and
got straight on to his main preoccupation.

"If I do get in touch, I’ll get no compromise toe-the-line. 1
can cope with not cross-dressing at Christmas, even if it does
relax me, provided he doesn't call me 'It'."

"That’s a good compromise," Junior muttered.

"I'm not a true transsexual. I know that now. 1 realized it
when I thought of begging Dad for the money for the op. I
knew at once I didn't want it that much." He half-drained his
pint of strong beer. “I found a shrink who's a bit more sensi-
ble than most, and we worked out it only started when Mum
left."

Junior considered. He hadn’t seen Dolly Kratch since E.
Ben Aesir went from making music to selling it and the real
money started to flow. Dolly had disappeared soon after that.
Still, everyone knew her videos, and it was true that Bob’s
female persona did resemble her stage self, especially the
wild but controlled hair, like Prince of Wales ostrich feathers.
He didn’t want to get into that, so he asked: "How is Aunt
Dolly anyway?"

"OK. She went back to Austria for a bit, now she's some-
where in the Middle East. Anyway, I know if J dress up, cross-
dress, for Christmas dinner it’ll set a bad role model for the
twins, or to be exact, freak Mary out. So, scratch that. What I
can’t abide is being told dinner is at one, and it's broadcast! It
always used to be after the Queen, about half three!"

"Even you don't sleep in till one, do you?"

"Bloody don’t! The whole point of working for CRASH is to
be there at Christmas. These people need me more than any-
one needs the Aesir family describing the Christmas sched-
ule from the dinner table! Who does he think he is the
bloody Queen?"

Junior shrugged. "OK, Unkgoes overboard, but the fact is,
the economy needs Christmas. I need it! If it wasn’t for Yule-
tide trade, Club Munch’em would hardly break even!"

Bob ignored the argument as one he'd often got too
involved in. "Anyway, so I compromise again. If 1 work Christ-
mas Eve till midnight, I can maybe trade the whole of Christ-
mas Day off. But / want some trade for that. I wanted one
carol in this obscenaganza to be from the Stable. We've got
some good singers, you know. Just to show... you know. It’s
obvious. We were discussing doing 'Good King W' or 'Once in
Royal David's.' Would he hear of it? NO!” Bob sat back and
shouted to the barman for two more pints. "Are you
involved?"

34

interzone January 1995

Peter T. Garratt

"A few carols from the club, yes."

"1 see. With the dancing girls and their boobies?"

"No. Definitely not them."

"1 didn’t think so.” He started on the second pint, became
more reflective. “Y'know, at least Dad's consistent in one way.
When 1 was little, when we were on the road, Dad used to say
there was no point in treating the symptoms of society's ill-
ness, which 1 suppose is what 1 do now."

Junior didn't argue. He too had once heard SKRU-I say
that.

Christmas Eve was even brighter and colder than the last few
days. No snow was forecast, but there would be frost in Lon-
don. Christmas would be quite white enough for anyone still
sleeping out. At the Club Munch'em, two unyuletide murals,
one of a cannibal enjoying himself, the other of a clubber
pretending to swallow something which of course no one
ever did consume at the club, had been hidden by big vid-
screens. There would be tight checks on the door for the
broadcast, and during it the only drink available was low-
alcohol punch. Stewards showed regulars to their tables, one
or two fashionably dressed girls who liked to be near the
cameras complaining that they had been shunted unceremo-
niously to the back. Tables near the front had been allocated
to the nurses who were to do "The Twelve Days of Christmas."
Junior had doubts about some of their dresses, but couldn’t
do much about them. On the stage, a voice trial for "Mary's
Boy Child" was under way, with lots of yells of "next" from the
audience. It was crowded and cheerfully chaotic.

At 9.30, the screens lit up. There were checks to Manger
Square in Bethlehem, to Trafalgar Square, scene of the main
British event, to locations in America. All the crowds could
see themselves or the others on huge screens. There were
some choirs in surplices, but mostly just soberly dressed
people, men in grey overcoats, women in white ones. Some
parts of Trafalgar Square were occupied by less committed
revellers, and camera angles were chosen which didn't show
these.

At ten to ten, Aesir spoke to the active participants across
the world. "Remember folks, this is a live broadcast in honour
of lesus and his Two Thousandth, brought to you by the
AesirCo satellite, but don't worry about stage fright. If you
forget your lines, don’t worry, they'll be there on the screens.
It is live, but if there are delays or hitches, this isn’t an old-
type karaoke system: the AesirCo computers will make sure
you always have exactly the right lines on the screens at the
exact moment you need them, in whatever language you
need them."

At five to ten, adverts ended. It was stressed that there
would be none during the global carol service itself. Mary
Aesir introduced the live broadcast, which began with the
scene in Manger Square, followed by "Hark, the Herald
Angels Sing" from a mall in Texas where it was still daylight.
Junior tensed as E. Ben Aesir said: "And now folks, for a dif-
ferent side of Yuletide, over to a club in London's West End!"

The "Twelve Days" began. He hadn’t known the nurses
meant to leap on and off chairs when each group came to its
present, and there were a few vulnerable dresses, especially
among the Turtle Doves and French Hens, but there were no
accidents. But there was one disturbing detail. Junior's cell-
phone rang halfway through and Future’s voice yelled above
the noise: "What do you know about this balls-up on the fifth

day?"

"Nothing! Seems OK to me!”

“The singing's OK. Look at the screen!”

The fifth day came round for the fifth time. At once Junior
noticed that instead of "a partridge in a pear tree," the true
love had sent "A new AesirCo CD', though it was supposed to
be an ad-free broadcast. "I see what you mean, but no one
here's looking at the words on the screen.”

"The punters at home will though."

"Well, don't blame me for anything your computer puts up
there. That’s nothing to do with me!”

Apart from that, the "Twelve Days" were a great success.
While the club was off the air for a carol from Trafalgar
Square, he warned the clubbers against too much reliance on
the screen. Unfortunately, that led a group of them to study it
and sing along raucously with each incoming carol.

"Mary's Boy Child" was almost due. The club numbers
would be got out of the way early. The chosen singers came
to the stage and made a horseshoe. At first all went well, but
on the second chorus, Junior's phone went again. Future
said: "Boss wants to know who that bloke is in the middle of
the horseshoe!"

"There’s no one in the middle. It's a perfect..."

E. Ben Aesir must have grabbed to phone. "Look! Who's
that idiot, the damn Pip Marlow impersonator, in the middle
of your stage?"

"There's no one in the middle! They’re nearly all girls..."

"Look, you idiot, look at the screen. Use your eyes!"

He looked at the screen and gaped. In mid-stage, dancing
much more wildly than the girls and making lewd gestures at
them, was a dishevelled figure in black leathers over-deco-
rated with studs and chains. Junior realized that it did look a
bit like Marlow, but a much younger Marlow in his singer-DJ
days.

"There's still no one on the real stage! No one! This lash-
up is nothing to do with me! It must be... some kind of ani-
mation interference. Christ! What's that!"

The words on the screen were wrong. The third chorus
read:

"Long time ago in Birmingham
"The Palace won away
"And we will win the Football League
"Because of Boxing Day!"

Everyone knew E. Ben Aesir was a director of Crystal
Palace. His investment had contributed to their recent league
title win. No one on the stage resembled the leather-and-
chains Marlow, nor had they sung from the screens, but the
mikes had picked up the raucous alternative version from
some of the audience.

"If there's no one imitating Marlow there, some insider is
trying to set me up! Family Conference, down here, now!"

Junior sent a steward for his coat, and another to move his
Honda Mangajet to the front, roared off past the queue of
people without tickets, Luckily, he’d been drinking the same
punch as the others. It was freezing on Charing Cross Road
and he wasn’t wearing his helmet. He weaved through traffic
and revellers, was briefly distracted by a coldproof girl in a
sleeveless dress so low it was almost topless, almost col-
lided with a middle-aged aged football supporter in the
colours, ironically, of the Palace. He grabbed his brake and
just missed the man, who must have been drunk, for he fell

interzone January 1995

35

Yuletide Karaoke

over anyway.

"Hey, You, YES YOU, are you gonna stop!" He looked
round. Two younger men, also Palace supporters, were run-
ning towards him. He roared up to 60 by the next lights,
which he just beat, screamed the brakes again on seeing a
police line around the square. Luckily, his Aesir family pass
got him through. He weaved more carefully through the non-
participating crowd at the edge. A lot of these people were
gesturing at the screens and the main party on the podium.
He drove as far as he could, stopped the engine and stood on
his footrests. He could just see that E. Ben Aesir had left the
front of the podium and was hunched over the control con-
sole with Future. Mary Aesir was doing a totally uncharacter-
istic wild dance, swinging her arms through the air as if
hitting at someone invisible.

He realized that the music was totally wrong, more like a
1980s rap than a carol. Whatever it was, the crowd's efforts to
sing it were a disaster. He looked at the screen and saw that
Mary was hitting in the direction of another phantom figure.
This time he realized it was a younger version of Aesir, all in
black and studs, though with fewer chains than Marlow. The
words on the screen read:

"It’s D)-SKRU-J's Xmas rap

"Leave out all that Yuletide crap

"What's for you in Santa's sack?

"Not so much if you are black!"

He realized it was a version of an ancient SKRU-J hit which
he hardly remembered, for it had never been re-released. The
figure on the screen was moving suggestively in a dance
roughly synchronized with Mary's wild swings. As he
watched, Past and Present moved to the front of the stage
and led Mary very firmly to the back. He waved his pass at the
police line and pushed through. Virtual-Aesir was yelling:

"Christmas trees are all endangered

"Most of them are acid-rain-dead!"

He reached the console just as the rap ended. Future was
saying: "...no way we can stop him doing it without crashing
the whole system."

"Stop who doing what?" Junior found himself asking.

"It's Marlow's damn interactive," Aesir shouted. "It's
infested the system. He never liked the way we were going
but he couldn’t swing the board. This is his pathetic revenge.
We have to stop him!”

"It's Bethlehem next," Future said. "What can he do there?"

As if in answer, the screen cleared, and the chain- jacketed
Marlow came on. He was shown walking down a narrow old
street, lined on one side by grim terraces where impover-
ished clerks might have lived, on the other by the even
meaner fronts of counting-houses. It was lit only by gas, but
a more generous light played over the Marlow-figure, glinting
on the chains as he said: "That was D) SKRU-J. Remember
him? Now known as E. Ben Aesir. Now to Bethlehem and
Dolly Kratch. Remember her? Mother of SKRU, sorry Ben's,
son Bob. Old Bob hasn’t been allowed to sing 'Once in Royal
David's City' from a Stable in London, but now his mum is
going to sing it from Manger Square!"

E. Ben Aesir almost screamed: "It's not possible! It's not
possible!” as Dolly appeared on the podium of the ceremony
in Manger Square. "Stop it! Get her off! Off!"

"Hold on," Future said. "Look, she’s singing it straight and
it'll take time..."

"That’s not she! That's an it, a part of Marlow's damned
interactive! Get it off!"

"OK. 1 might just be able to isolate cameras, transmitters,
satellite, screens from the computer net, but it’ll mean crash-
ing the whole thing, and Marlow could be in the..."

"Do it! Crash it! Now!"

Dolly's voice filled the square. It wasn't a pure voice, but sin-
cere. Unlike the other illusions, she looked her real age. The
people who had stopped singing during the rap joined in.

Just after "With the poor and mean and lowly" Future hit
something and said: "Now!" The lyrics vanished from the
screens, but Dolly and the crowd kept singing: "Lived on
Earth our Saviour Holy.”

Future said: "Hold on. Most of the gear is disconnected
from the computer and she’s still there. I’ll try the separate
radio... what’s happening to the monitor?"

Dolly was still on the big screens, but the small console
monitor was filling with what looked like handwriting. Future
said: "Well, the computer didn't crash completely, but that is
her: she’s on the radio which doesn't use it."

"She can't be..."

At that point Bob Kratch ran up. He was plainly dressed
apart from a hat with feathers. He said: "Dad, thank you so
much for including Mum in this! But why didn't you say? I... "

E. Ben Aesir said: "It wasn't exactly me." H€ was looking at
the monitor, which had scrolled up a hand-written letter, his
hand, inviting Dolly to sing in Bethlehem. "Say it was my
damn partner. He's trying to screw everything! But I won’t let
him!"

Past and Present returned from wherever they had taken
Mary. Past was saying: "...all her idea. Not businesslike at
all!"

Present nodded: "Now it's totally screwed up!"

"No!” Aesir shouted. "No one, man, ghost or machine, is
gonna say on my satellite that E. Ben Aesir won’t put a carol
on, and then pirate it on himself!"

Junior shrugged. "He has said it!”

"But 1 can still do it. It’s not even half past. Son, can you
ring your... stable and tell them they're on for ‘Good King
Wenseslas' at least? Junior, you got that fast bike? Take Bob
and get down the East End. I'll get a camera crew to you by
the end of the show." He turned on Past and Present, pulling
cash from his wallet. "You two get after them and scour the
Brick Lane curry shops for the biggest Christmas Eve take-
away in history. OK, you think I'm mad. Well, they thought a
singer-DJ was mad to take on serious business, and I'm not
finished yet!"

It was organized by the time Dolly finished singing. E. Ben
Aesir didn't leave with the others: he listened to the end of
her carol, suddenly feeling nostalgic.

Yuletide might not be successful, but he was starting to
have a happy Christmas.

Peter T. Garratt has written three previous stories for Interzone ■
"If the Driver Vanishes" (issue 13), "Our Lady of Springtime"
(issue 25) and "The Collectivization of Transylvania" (issue 81).
He lives in Brighton.

36

interzonc January 1995

T o begin with a dream, it goes without
saying that true lovers of Mary
Shelley's Frankenstein would ideally
prefer a Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
that was more openly about Mary Shelley.
Indeed, it's hard to see how a 1990s reading
of the original novel, or arguably novels,
can be anything else. Certainly biographers
take it for granted that, in the original text
of 1816-7, the monster’s relationship with
its creator refracts, in varying degrees,
Mary's own relationships with William
Godwin, with Shelley, and with her own
dead mother and daughter; and that the
notably soggier 1831 revision overwrites
these with Mary's own relationship with her
book, expressing her radical recomposition
of her personal story in the more fatalistic
and conformist terms in which she had by
then recreated herself from the dead tissue
of her lost life with Shelley. This second text
- the true "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein,''
inasmuch as it was the first to which she
put her name - is usually, and irresistibly,
seen as a retrospective reinterpretation of
her own youth's creation to assimilate her
struggles after Shelley's death in 1822, her
muting of her own parents' radical
rationalisms under a blanket of romantic
Stoicism, her careful reconciliation with the
public in the role of serious novelist and
exemplary literary widow, and the popular
notoriety of her creation. Its celebrated
preface on the book's making, a document
whose magnificent obfuscations border on
genius, responds with calculated
disingenuous to years of exasperating FAQs
about how what Beckford called "the foulest
Toadstool that has yet sprung up from the
reeking dunghill of present times" could
properly be the work of a demure teenager
whose only experience of darkness and
distance had been an austere and
unmothered childhood, an escape into
adultery, exile, and excoriation, a
distressing string of familial estrangements
and suicides, and a gruesome series of dead
babies.

That preface itself, as a work of autobio-
graphical fiction, is sufficiently mythic to
have spawned its own film lineage,
from the prologue and double-
casting in Bride of Frankenstein,
via the turbid abysms of Gothic
and Haunted Summer, to the
monstrously mixed blessing
of Roger Corman’s Brian
Aldiss's Frankenstein
Unhound; and a
particularly

misdirecting fragment i
does actually recur in
an uncredited
voiceover (presumably •

Helena Bonham
Carter's) over the title Mary
Shelley 's before
FRANKENSTEIN comes up.

But while it's matter for regret that
this solitary, disembodied cameo is Mary's
only emergence in the film, there's a
paradoxical sense in which Branagh and his
writers, in dedicating their Frankenstein as
Mary Shelley's, can reasonably claim to be

perfectly faithful to that version of the novel
to which its creator gave her name: a
version which masked her own presence in
the tale, by reintroducing it as a gleeful
horror story with a dire moral whose
complex resonance with her own experience
is accidental, retrospective, and confined to
the period after its making. (The frankest
prologue to a "Mary Shelley's" Frankenstein
would be a dramatization of Mary's journal
entry for March 19, 1815 —

"Dream that my little baby came to life
again - that it had only been cold & that we
rubbed it before the fire & it lived - 1 awake
& find no baby - 1 think about the little
thing all day - not in good spirits.”

which should properly be inscribed on the
flyleaf of every copy of the novel. 1 suppose
we should be grateful that Hollywood would
never, in a million years, dream of daring.)

And in fact, there are several innovations
in Branagh's revisionary film - thoughtful,
inventive, and laudably well-meant, if at
times monumentally flat or silly - that hint
at considerable sensitivity to the
autobiographical elements in the book.
Victor's mother, for example, dies not of a
fever but in childbed (as Mary
Wollstonecraft died from bearing the

Nick Lowe

author), at the birth of Victor's beloved and
doom-destined brother William (named, as
in the novel, for the Shelleys’ first son,
whom the author was nursing as the book
took shape and who survived its publication
by only a year). Frankenstein's journal is a
rite-of-passage gift from his dead mother,
the first page inscribed by her own hand -
just as Percy Shelley's was the first hand in
Mary's own famous journal, begun with
their elopement in 1814. Like Mary,
Frankenstein is driven to creation by the
impossible desire to reverse the loss of
loved ones: first mother, then mentor, then
spouse. Most strikingly of all, the film is
saturated in images of childbirth, alien to
the novel but central to the circumstances
of its creation: from the impressively
graphic fate of Victor's mother to the
extraordinary scene of naked Creature and
creator slimily wrestling in a waterbirth of
amniotic fluid.

How much, if any, of this is deliberate
allusion foT the pleasure of MWS
trainspotters remains impossible to tell.

But it at least testifies to an address to the
novel immeasurably more intelligent,
complex, serious, faithful in spirit, and
coherent in milieu and style than Coppola's
preposterous Dracula - in pretty much the
same degree as Branagh's film is duller,
more conventional, and less flamboyantly
commercial. There doesn't seem any easy
way round the fact that, where Dracula
made a twisted caricature of Stoker's
creation and soaked up money like a
bandage on an open throat wound,
Frankenstein preserves more of the tissue of
its reconstituted beloved than any film
version before it, yet seems unlikely to
survive a head-to-head with Interview With
the Vampire. Nobody's fault; it's just that
slurping the blood of virgins in nighties is
jolly erotic, whereas making people out of
corpses has all the sexual charge of a rainy
Sunday afternoon in Warrington.

At the very least, we should be grateful
that Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to
the extent that it's an
elaboration of the novel
rather than of any of the
hundred or so stage
versions or the two
hundred or so earlier
films. As all good
Famous Monsters
saddoes know,
Universal's
Frankenstein -
like its
stablemate
Dracula, and
all the feature-
film descendants of
both - took nothing of
substance direct from
the novel. It came rather
from the long line of stage
versions, running from
Richard Brinsley Peake's 1823
Presumption, or The Fate of
Frankenstein to Peggy Webling's

interzone January 1995

Mutant Popcorn

1927 play, the ultimate source of Whale's
screenplay and the 21st of its line. The vital
signs of this tradition of theatrical
Frankensteins are a mute or severely
inarticulate monster; an aristocratized
Victor offset by tiresome comic peasants;
and the drastic compression of the novel's
globespanning travelogue and elaborate
concentric frames (Walton's letters,
Frankenstein's story, the monster's
narrative) into a single day's action in and
around the family seat. There's also a
tendency to reshuffle the romantic pairings
pretty much ad lib, with Victor, Henry
Clerval, and Felix De Lacey available for
matchmaking with any of Elizabeth, Justine,
Agatha, and Safie the Turk.

Now, Mary Shelley's does repudiate the
stage tradition's cinematic descendants in
reinstating Walton and the Arctic frame,
stripping Victor of his Baronetcy (though
not of his gothic pile), and restoring
articulacy to the Creature (sic, intriguingly
restoring Webling's own term for the
previous century's "monster"). But at the
same time it's not ashamed to appropriate
many of the inventions of the Frankenstein
movies - the lightning, the laboratory, the
pointlessly vast staircases, the
graverobbing, criminal corpses, and
transplanted brains - and, more
significantly, the sense of opportunistic
flexibility in the central characters and
relationships, where the combined, or
opposed, ingenuities of Hollywood and
Blightywood have busied themselves blind
to think of a story. Such a creation could
have been unspeakably dire, as it mostly
was in Bram Stoker's Dracula itself: a
monstrous confection from shreds and
patches of dead predecessors whose
potential for good is perverted to criminal
ghastliness by the inhuman insensitivity of
its own maker. But what's remarkable about
the Bram gang’s attempt to create a mate
for their monster is that what comes out of

the tank, for all its dramatic unevenness, is
easily the most thoughtful, relevant, and
morally sophisticated Frankenstein since
Mary's, and certainly the most ingeniously
reassembled from the disjecta membra of its
precursors, as well as being the first fully to
succeed in updating its Promethean
problem for a different, but no less
hybristic, scientific age.

It's no secret here that the screenplay
went through more hands than are credited,
and that the Darabont-Branagh posse took
charge of a draft from the Zoetrope team
that had been significantly further from the
novel. It's still a shame to lose the scenes in
Orkney and Ireland, the trial of Justine
Moritz, the Turkish subplot and intercultural
romance (possibly too politicized to survive
in this version), the most famous closing
line in all sf (MSF goes out, predictably, in a
blaze of glory), and even "1 will be with you
on your wedding night" (cumbrously
rewritten in one of the film's numerous
excesses of ingenuity). The new Henry
Clerval is more of a spare dinner than ever,
forgotten entirely in the finale; and there's a
lot of flimsy patching at the climax of

Justine's story. But there's much neat
replotting of such elements as the locket,
Justine's corpse, and Walton's decision to
turn back from the pole, and the major new
twist at the climax is astutely set up and
nothing like as silly as it threatens to be,
with some nice, if presumably coincidental,
echoes of Aldiss. And above all, given that
the thankless and inescapable brief is, once
again, to reanimate the novel as a love story
and its message as Love Never Dies, it’s
astonishing how deftly Branagh's gang
hijack the vehicle to pilot it back to the
central concerns of the book.

The vitalizing force of this rebirth is a subtle
but significant shift of centre. Where Mary
Shelley’s Frankenstein was about creating
life, Mary Shelley's is about undoing death.
And while nobody in Hollywood or the
ticket-buying masses is particularly excited
by the former, especially after 200 earlier
movies have unanimously opined what a
jolly bad thing it is, the latter is not only the
principal obsession of everyone west of the
Sierra Nevada, but the one scientific goal
everyone in the world can identify with - to
the point that Victor's attacks of conscience
seem if anything rather excessive. It does
forces some tricky rewriting of the novel's
central concept of the Creature as a moral
tabula rasa, since Victor is now interested
not merely in the general benefaction of
mortals at large but in the reanimation of
specific beloved individuals - so that the
issue of precisely whose brain is
transplanted to his Creatures, and how
much of their former identity is retained, is
paramount. But the script deals with this
through a well-devised ethical debate
between maker and monster over whether
the corpses pillaged for scrap are
anonymous, ownerless "raw materials" or
people with identities and rights
inalienable even by death.

This is such good stuff that it's the
greater pity that the dialogue, drama, and
performances never quite match up. Helena
Bonham Carter is particularly dreary
casting, unable to shake off her unrivalled
chain of previous roles as a period wet, and
crippling the attempt to strengthen the
Elizabeth character; while the supporting
players seem to be hewn from a peculiar
variety of costume cardboard fondly
remembered from the golden age of
Hammer, right down to the personality-free,
RSC-accented Swiss peasants. Branagh
himself, never the most charismatic of
screen presences for all his gothic
enthusiasm behind the camera and
positively Promethean skills as producer, is
surprisingly uncompelling as Victor -
especially given that he seems to be
playing, if not himself, then at least the less
amiable side of his public image. De Niro,
meanwhile, does undeniably interesting
work by the standards of his predecessors,
but scarcely shines by his own. His very
actorly reading of the Creature ("you gave
me these emotions," the star tells his
director in the glacier scene, "but you didn't
tell me how to use them") is full of bravura
professional set pieces like the extended

Below-. Richard Briers as The Blind Man, and Robert DeNiro as The Creature.

38

interzone January 1995

Nick Lowe

Kenneth Branagh as Frankenstein and Helena Bonham-Carter as Elizabeth, in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

business with Frankenstein's journal ("Okay,
Bob, 1 want you to handle the book in the
way you would if you had no idea what a
book was"), the interview with the blind
man ("Right, Bob, now try to imagine you
had all the words but had never spoken to
another person before"), and the expression
of monster emotion ("See, my idea of the
Creature is it's not just his physical strength
that's superhuman, but his feelings, and
that's what makes him such a tragic and
dangerous figure when the world rejects his
love, okay, let's try it again, and this time I
want to really hear that monster pain, a
little louder, good, good, great and
ACTION").

But no amount of monster acting can
make up for the loss of so much of the
novel's painfully articulate monster verbals,
and De Niro's creature, unlike his maker, is
underwritten and banks far too much on
technique. (Keep an eye for the. moment
when Richard Briers says "Won't you come
in and sit by the fire?" and Bobby gives that
trademark half-glance-over-the-shoulder
that says "Are you talking to me? Are you
talking to me?") The dialogue is a lot better
at being portentous than being intimate,
which doesn't hurt the gothickry one bit but
severely hurts the romance; and while
Branagh directs with his by now
characteristic technical gusto, as ever his
work with actors is only as good as their
lines. The acupuncture-and-amnio flim-flam
is bizarre even by the high standards of

Frankenstein-movie scientific hogwash; and
though infinitely more delicate than Dracula
in its handling of period sexual manners,
Frankenstein permits itself moments of
sublime awfulness to remind us of our luck:
"I'll be here when you return," Elizabeth
promises Victor as he leaves for Ingolstadt,
"and then on our wedding night..." ("... you

can shag me senseless," injects comedian in
audience). Clearly we should welcome and
cherish this scarred, lumbering thing for its
humanity and intelligence, its deep
affection for its creator, and the genuine
good that is in it. But no one could gaze on
its pleading face without the occasional
shudder. Nick Lowe

POWERFUL IMAGERY FROM

A 11k* jewel like pai n tings of l.nda and
Rcge- Garland have established them as
highly sougril-after far tasy artists. Roger
is best known for his Tolkien covers and
Linda lor her Goddess paintings.

This is the its: collection of their work.
ISBN I 85028 144 1 f t > 96 limphack
◄ Showcases Jute Bel 's most higHy-
acrl aimed heroic ‘anrasy artworks,
displaying the power of her imagination
and the dynamism of her imagery.

ISBN 1 86928 146 1 f.'2.9-> l.mplrank

this first collection of his photographic
work, artist Boris Vallejo affirms his deep
appreciation of the beauty and grace of
the human physique and shows that the
inspiration for his. fantasy artwork comes
from life.

ISBN 1 85028 268 4 £20.00 Hardback

T rhese six miniature books certain the
work of top fantasy artists, they make
idea' gifts for fantasy collectors.'

Ranh volume: 0.99 Hardback
100x75mm Over 70 illustrations

interzone January 1995

39

H e stopped in a dark passage and unloaded the carrion.
Clotted blood smeared his shirt, but he was indiffer-
^pSt to that. He lurked in the deeper shadows and
peered around the dusty courtyard with its crumbling walls,
hoping for one glimpse through the upstairs window.

He felt a neighbour's curious eyes watching him through
the wall of -shimmering heat. Hdlcould see nothing. It was
dose to noon.

The echoing street noise seemed remote and strange.

The rotten meat stank. It was old and riddled with mag-
gots. That wouldn't matter to the creature inside his house.
That ever-hungry freak would devour anything. The worms
themselves were its food.

Ellen loved the^ods.

When she anfffom happened upon the market, Ellen felt a
rush of happiness as intensdas the pleasures of childhood.
The market was a tumble ogs'trange noises, colours, odours.
These goods had all the deep mystery of the unknown coun-
tries of their origin.

She walked among the booths, tiny counters, small stands,
loose piles of wares on a single woollen tablecloth. She
admired handwpven fabrics, ivory carvings and crystal chal-
ices. Her eyes were caught byrfiina bowls, plates, gleaming
jars and vases racked on long wooden shelves. She was
charmed by vivid sheeriS™ fabric, by dark Asian faces-
obscured in shadows, by loud alien voices.

It was all so wonderful: so strange.

The market seemed unimaginably large, crowded, and rich.
Furs lay on the ground in careless heaps. They fascinated her
with their promise of softness and warmth. She knelt sud-
denly and touched them, then stroked them with both her
hands, and, finally, buried her face in them. She longed never
to go home, to stay here forever, to be dissolved in the mar-
ket’s goods, or to dissolve the goods-fnside herself.

Later, she bought spices, strange vegetables and cartons
of black tea. The goods seemed unbelievably cheap. She and
Thomas then decided on a wooden pony for Lucas; and the
toy was cheap, too.

Cheap even by their meagre standards,

"Thomas, maybe we can even buy a carpet here," she said.
They'd wanted a carpet ever since their arrival here in exile,
six months ago. There was little joy ijvsfeeping in bags, or in
walking on a concrete floor covered with newspapers. So far,
there had always been far more pressing uses for the little-
money Thomas managed to earn. It was hard for Thomas and
Ellen Braunstein to get used to exile and privation. Once
they had .seen so rich.

Ellen tightly gripped her husbands hand and leaned
against his ear amidst the noisy babble of the marketplace:
"There are bound to be carpets here, don't you think? And
they can't all be expensive!"

Tom nodded at his wife. He felt reluctant, but he knew she
was right; a cheap-carpet would be a great advantage to
them. They began searching, and walked narrow aisles'-
among casks of olives, past counters of dried fish and exotic
fruits. At length they neared one edge of the market. The
crowd of buyers had grown thin and the racket of voices was
far behind them.

"Thomas! Here's some!" He turned to see Ellen pointing at
a booth. The carpet stall was half-hidden in a courtyard
niche, surrounded by high walls on three sides. The carpets

were heaped on the^Stand's wooden frame, displayed on
racks aboye-the countergjistened to the walls; and still more
lay in rolled hegps all around. A cotton sail hung like afrifl
-overhead, shadowing the’eourtyard, protecting the delicate
tints of the carpets from the sunlight.

With a shock, Tom suddenly realized that he and his wife
were the- only customers
"Let's go back, Ellen," he muttered.

"What! We can at least look around. Ask the price, for
heaven’s Sake Wedon t have to buy it right away!”

"It's so.- ... deserted here."

"Well, that's even better!"

Ellen stepp’efiprward and examined the goods. She fin-
e-gered the threading of the uppermost carpet in a heap. The
patterns were dazzling and the colours so vivid that they
glowed even in the dim light through the overhead sail.

"We could use a carpet for our bedroom," she said to the
counterman. “A little carpet will do fine," she added hastily.
eB Tie- counterman stepped lazily from his high st|8. He
stretched back without looking and seized a carpet-roll lean-
ing against the wall. With a deft flick of the wrists, he flung it
open across the counter.

"The best in stock foryou, ma'am."

The carpet was as soft a’s cat's fur, and deep greefi. its
greenness was perfect, like the manicured green lawn at the
house of Ellen's parents There was no pattern woven into it,
but when Ellen stroked it with her palm, it changed its sheen
from dark to ligqfn HR

Standing beside her, watching, Tom also felt a powerful
urge to. stroke the carpet. To rub it with his bare skin. To lean
agaipl it. To collapse into its depths. The feeling was ludi-
crous, but far too intense to resist. He brushed his knuckles,
lightly across the piiingand felt a chill go through him.

Strange excitement rose within him He stepped back to
draw a breath, but it didn't rid him of his sudden intense fan-
tasy. How wonderful it would be to make 1'ove to Ellen on
that carpet.

He came to an instant decision,

‘How much is U 0 ;,;-

The counterman grinned. His eyes moved to Ellen, to the
carpet, and then to.fem again.

"You can take this little item, Mr. Braunstein, if you want it
so much," said the counterman slowly, "Foryou, it is free."

Maggie Winston was 25 and already mother of four children.
The children had changed her - imprisoned her in the
unbreakable circle of housework, narrowed her horizon. Mag-
gie claimed that motherhood had filled her with unspeakable
happiness; but it had changed her unimaginably.

She had a vast solid bosom, wide hips, a waistline sunken
in fat. And yet, she had a good temper. She was one of those-
women who seemed native to all parts of the world: they
weren't born, they didn't die, they just changed their names.

"Four kids, five kids, what's the difference, Ellen?” Maggift
waved her meaty hand. "I didn't mind watching him. Luke's a
gbfld baby."

Ellen put thtkbaby back in her snuggle. Lucas was seven
months old - he'd been born in a boat, on their way acroslf-
the sea. Their little stateless child knew nothing of the harsh
realities: that had forced his parents to flee so quickly and so
far.

"Oh, thank you so much Maggie. You know, Tom and I
found the most marvellous oriental open-air market. It's'

40

interzone January 1995

close to the beach. Behind the 56th."

Ben Winston appeared in the shadowed doorway of the
bedroom. He was pensive, dressed in the ratty old pullover
he always wore. He nodded to Ellen; he gave her body the
usual lingering once-over with his eyes, but he said nothing.
Ben Winston never said anything. Ellen had never heard him
say more than a few words.

"A market? Here in town? It must have been opened
recently," said Maggie.

"Come see my place. We've got a new carpet there," said
Ellen. She and Maggie stepped across the hall to the Braun-
stein's flat. The carpet was already on the floor of their only
room - soft, silky, looking as inviting as fresh grass. The car-
pet was smaller than the room, and there was a desolate bor-
der of bare concrete around it. But with the carpet
brightening the place, even their cheap fabric-covered pack-
ing-crates gave an illusion of comfort.

When Maggie left, Ellen fed Lucas and put him to sleep;
she and Thomas ate little and didn’t bother with cooking.

They locked-up, and turned off the light.

They had to do all the interesting things in pitch darkness,
for they had no curtains for the windows.

The carpet was a joy and wonder in the days that followed.

In the windowed sunshine, Ellen could witness its full
beauty. Strips of darker and lighter green followed each other
like the crests and troughs of waves. Somehow, it reminded
her of home, the house of her early childhood: mysterious,
silent, shrouded by moss and ivy. She could not resist its
allure and stroked and touched the carpet frequently. At first
she told herself that this was accidental, but as the days went
on she surrendered that pretence. She walked on the carpet
barefoot, then bent from the waist to brush it with both
hands. She never put Lucas in his makeshift cradle any more,
but made him a bed on the carpet.

She was very careful with it; the very thought of damaging
or staining her carpet was maddening. It had to stay clean,
entirely free of grit or crumbs or morsels. She was obsessive:
she brushed the carpet several times a week, and when
Thomas wasn't there to watch her, she even fine-combed its
long green nap.

Sometimes she would isolate some noxious bit of lint, a
stray hair - but never any food.

Four weeks went by.

Then the baby disappeared.

They informed the police of the kidnapping, but received only
grim suspicion. The local police despised refugees of their
sort, and it was clear that the cops thought they had mur-
dered their own child... or sold him. It was just like the gloom
and terror in their own lost homeland, the fear they had once
hoped to escape.

Their threats and ancient slurs panicked Ellen, and she
retreated to their room. As days passed she felt surrounded
by a rising tide of unbearable hatred. Everyone and every-
thing seemed rancorous, bitter, plotting maliciously against
them - even their few wretched possessions seemed to bear
them a grudge. One evening, as they sat emptily in their
rooms, desperate and hopelessly alone, Ellen broke the
silence.

"We're truly cursed people, Thomas. Our escape, our flee-
ing here, that was all just an illusion. There's no refuge for us
anywhere. We can never run far enough. The whole world

inierzone January 1995

41

around us has nothing to offer us but hatred, hatred, hatred.”

It seemed a sin to bring another human being into such a
world, but Ellen longed for another child. It seemed the only
chance at life, the only chance to defeat their overwhelming
sorrow. The urge to bear another child was stronger with
each passing day - life would go on that way, humanity
would somehow continue.

She and Thomas made love in the velvet embrace of their
carpet. And lay there side by side, afterward, their sweating
backs pressed into its soft warmth.

She awoke in darkness. It was midsummer and the sun had
been rising early. Behind their still uncurtained window the
sky was growing light, with the promise of another day,
maybe, a beautiful day.

She yawned and stretched her arms.

Anxiety struck her. Her posture was all wrong, her body
gone strangely stiff. She ran her hands down her breasts and
stomach, then down to her womb, filled with precious seed
now like pearls in a cave. And she screamed in terror when
she touched the monstrous remnants of her thighs; nothing
left of her legs now, nothing there but warm, moist, unbear-
ably soft and fluffy carpet.

The carpet, of course, was bigger now. It filled every square
inch of the floor from wall to wall, and it had rooted itself
through the desolate flooring somehow; it was too tenacious
to be ripped up or torn away. It resisted blows and beatings
and defied the touch of a knife. Thomas didn’t dare to
destroy the carpet in any case. He was afraid of what it might
do to Ellen. Writhing sheens of dark and lighter green striped
across the carpet's surface now, expressions of some scale of
primitive emotions: delight, anger, satiation, hunger. It was
much more than a mere beast, and showed real cunning,
even a queer intelligence. If its island spots and patches of
lighter green grouped together in the ocean of darker green,
that meant anger, and hunger. And if it weren't fed, it would
simply consume more and more of Ellen's body, cell by cell.

Any sort of meat would satisfy it.

It devoured any cheap carrion he threw at it - and it grew.
To feed it, Thomas had to drop solid tiles across its surface,
and jump from foothold to foothold. He would fling the meat
aside, staggering off-balance, then stare in disgust as the
meat vanished utterly in a sea of boiling green.

"You shouldn't ever feed it,” Ellen whispered.

"Don't talk about that."

"You can see that it's growing."

"1 haven't any choice."

"Thomas. You need to kill me."

He was angry with her. “We won't discuss that!"

"We have to. We have to face up to that. Thomas, I've been
dead for two months. I'm already dead. Just look at me! How
can you go on with this cruelty? You know that in the end
there will be nothing left of me but... it."

The passion in her voice forced him to stare at her. Delib-
erately she threw aside her gown, showing the remains of the
pale body he'd once found so arousing... The thing had been
at her again, she’d lost maybe a finger's width of her torso to
the green immersion. The stealthiness of it was hideous - a
death like some endless, irresistible theft.

"Every day it takes me more quickly. Don’t you even realize
that? You can’t keep pawning it off with kitchen trash like in
the beginning - it killed our child, and it wants richer meat

42

all the time. The day has to come when you run out of food
for it. Then whatever you bring it later just won't be enough."

Tom could not imagine what went through Ellen's head
during those long silent hours alone, while he scrounged the
rotten provender for the creature infesting his home. It
seemed amazing that she had not plunged far past the edge
of madness, that anything like her old self, her sweetness and
sensibility, had survived. He could not decide whether her
madness in these circumstances would be good or bad. He
had lost all standards of sane judgement, and forever crossed
the borders of reality.

In the days that followed they could still talk together,
though sometimes the madness would surge up in a rush of
deep emotion and they would begin to rave.

"I've been searching for the marketplace again," he told
her. "I couldn’t find it when 1 looked for it that day when...
when it happened to you. But I’ve searched again and again,
so many times... It occurred to me, if only we could track
down where the carpet came from, learn something about
the original source of it, about its real origins..."

"That's our fate," she blurted. "Searching forever for the
real origins of everything."

He stared at her blankly. "What?"

"To search forever for the place that gives us all the
goods."

Thomas shifted uneasily. His perch on the tiling in the
middle of the carpeted floor was none too steady. The tile
seemed to vibrate beneath him, as if there were no firm
foothold left on earth, and when he looked at his wife again,
he felt the sudden conviction that at last her madness was
genuine.

"I... I don’t want to hurt you talking about it, Ellen," he
said. "But I’ve been there so many times.... I mean, a whole
marketplace simply can’t disappear like that. You remember
how huge it was, we almost got lost inside it. 1 thought to
myself, they've closed down the business, they’ve packed up
the goods and dismantled the stands and trucked it all away,
but Ellen, there's not even a space left. There's nothing at all
behind 56th, the area there simply doesn't exist, it's just..."
He couldn't go on.

"The harbour?" she prompted.

"Yes, just a deserted harbour."

"I know that. I've seen it too."

"You have?" His eyes widened. He was surprised to hear
her confess this knowledge, but it also seemed peculiar,
almost shocking, to recall a time when his wife was free to
move around by herself. Those now-improbable, unlikely
memories of a time when Ellen could actually go somewhere.

"I tried to find the marketplace on the day that Lucas van-
ished. And I saw for myself that there was nothing there but
water. I don't know why I never told you about that, Tom.
Maybe it was just too hard to admit to myself - that the
whole marketplace was nothing but empty water.”

She gazed around the narrow room, her eyes distant and
clouded.

"You remember how the counterman knew our names,
though we never told him? Somehow he knew who we really
are - or what we really were, back in those days."

"Certainly, Ellen."

"Don’t humour me! The goods were meant for us, specifi-
cally for us, for nobody else but you and me. It was all cre-
ated just for us. The marketplace. The carpet. The harbour."

interzone January 1995

"Ellen....''

"A market, a carpet, a harbour. It’s so obvious.... I've known
the worst for a long time, really."

Tom was too frightened to speak. The look of madness
stiffened her face, the words swimming through her head like
fish in murky water. There was no human blood left inside
her. Her veins emptied into the hungry mass of an alien
being. The carpet shone the deep green of its monstrous con-
tentment and he felt it would be safe to step across it, to
touch her, to comfort her, but he didn't dare.

She began to sway slowly in place, eyes closed, fingering
strands of her hair. "Marketplace, carpetplace, harbour," she
said in a singsong, "my Thomas will return there, la la la...
because he does nothing but wander across the sea, from
one end of the world to the other. Always looking for the
place things come from, we only run and run... You'll run,
Thomas, to some other distant place, the place where they
sell straw, and spice, and coffee, and ivory, and fur, and tea...”
She chanted the names of the goods blindly, in an eerie
melody, her anchored body swaying in rhythm.

The waves of dark green, light green. Delight and anger, sati-
ation and hunger.

Ben Winston stood uneasily on a piece of wooden board,
puffing rapidly at a cigar. He couldn't seem to believe what
he was seeing - he wouldn't meet their eyes. And yet he kept
stealing eager glances at Ellen, as she lay there languidly,
half-embedded in the floor. They weren't glances of pity, or a
terror of monstrosity. It looked almost something like affec-
tion.

"Yeah, well, Maggie’s been askin'," he said. "But you're
right, Tom. We’ll just have to tell her that Ellen left some-
wheres, gone to the country or somethin'." Winston nodded
brusquely, like a strong man with his mind made up, but he
didn't move and his hands were shaking.

A sparking cascade of cigar ash fell to the carpet.

There were footsteps in the hall, a sudden savage pound-
ing at the door. "Herr Braunstein!" It was the downstairs
neighbour, a Mr Rotenberg.

Rotenberg was a complex, nervous little man and now he
sounded both indignant and scared witless.

"Herr Braunstein! I know you can hear me! Come down to
my flat and take a look at this horrible stain!"

Tom stood frozen.

"Herr Braunstein!" Rotenberg kicked the door till it shook
in its flimsy hinges.

"Are you there?" he shrieked. "Herr Braunstein!"

"Of course, of course I'm here!" The pounding stopped.
Tom unlocked the door and slipped outside.

Ben Winston and Ellen were left alone.

He found the courage to look at her directly. He wasn't
much for talk, and couldn't find the words to express his fas-
cination. Her pale face, untouchable, mysterious, exotic,
seemed to intoxicate him.

"It's like a forest," she said suddenly.

"What? Your face?"

"The room where Rotenberg lives. The ceiling's like a for-
est. The carpet’s overgrown it completely."

He blinked, astonished. "You can see the carpet in Roten-
berg' s place?"

"I am the carpet."

Ben shuddered at the words, and at that moment despair

filled her and she realized the utter uselessness of every-
thing.

"Ben. Dear Ben, do something for me."

"You just name it, Ellen."

"I want you to kill me. Please... just kill me.”

"No!"

"Kill me!"

"I couldn't do that, Ellen!"

"You once said you’d do anything for me."

Pity showed on his face. Not the compassion of a man for
a woman, but the pity of a sane man for a mad creature. She
couldn’t move him that way; she was too far gone. Because
she was too crazy.

"Oh, God," she muttered. She looked away in defeat.

And she saw, by Ben's feet, small blackened spots in the
carpet. Tiny patches burnt into its emerald surface. The ashes
from his cigar. She felt a moment of terror, even then, at the
damage to her precious carpet, and then she realized: fire.
Carpets could burn.

"Ben," she murmured.

"Yeah, um, I'm still here, Ellen."

The absurdity of it almost made her laugh. Now her hands
were trembling, too.

"Just one little thing," she said. "You can do this for me,
can't you? Up on the shelf there, back behind me, where 1
can't reach - it's my baby’s toy. Lucas's little wooden horse.
Tom's hidden it from me, he doesn't want me to look at it,
because of Lucas.... but since Tom won't get it for me, won't
you get it? I really want to see it, Ben."

Such an innocent request. The wooden pony from the mar-
ketplace.

When he reached for it, her clever fingers stole the match-
box from the baggy pocket of his pullover. She tucked them
in her fist, and he noticed nothing as he handed her the toy.
"Go see what they’re doing downstairs," she said. "Maybe you
can help them."

Without another word, he left her there.

She put the wooden toy in front of her, like kindling. She
laughed then, in true madness; she laughed at the ugly mercy
that allowed her to die so horribly. She laughed at the goods:
their life-destroying hatred, hatred, hatred.

She opened the box and methodically scattered little flam-
ing stars. She was in the centre of a fairy-ring of dancing
lightning-bugs.

She felt no pain as yet.

Now the flames began to feed on the green pelt of the car-
pet, shimmers of green flickering at the rims of the ring of
fire.

She began to sing.

The hem of her skirt bloomed in orange and gold.

(Translated by M. Kledma and Bruce Sterling)

Vilma Kadlec kova lives in Prague, Czech Republic. She won the
Karel Capek Award for the best sf short story in 1990 (at the age of
19), and again in 1993. She has also published a first novel in her
native country.

interzone January 1995

43

S FICTION

The

Tenacity

Charles Platt

P erhaps you've heard of “Myst," the first
bona-fide science-fiction CD-ROM
bestseller. Of course, it's not really
science fiction. Factually accurate,
conscientiously realistic extrapolation
doesn't really exist among the various
visual media. It would be more accurate to
describe "Myst” as an adventure game with
science-fiction and fantasy elements. The
player explores an imaginary island and
uncovers a bunch of clues and portents,
beasts and magickal personae. The
conception is slightly more adult and
slightly more original than that of other CD-
ROMs, and consequently it has been hailed
as a revelation, a work of genius, final proof
that multimedia has come of age and will
ultimately sweep old-fashioned "linear"
storytelling into oblivion.

This, at least, is the prediction that has
been made by some disciples of
multimedia, who seem to have succeeded in
unnerving a few New York publishers to the
point where they are now trying to

neutralize the threat by throwing money at
it. When book rights to "Myst" were
auctioned, the bidding went up to an
unprecedented seven million dollars.

New York publishers have always tended
to spend wildly when spurred by the fear of
failing to leap aboard an appropriate
bandwagon. They've heard about CD-ROMs,
some of them have even seen CD-ROMs, and
a little knowledge is dangerous enough to
precipitate a buying frenzy, even though
there is still no hard evidence that CD-
ROMs will ever move far outside their initial
mode as a reference tool. As one relatively
sane and sceptical editor said to me, "For
seven million dollars, I could have probably
bought up the entire software development
company that created 'Myst'. 1 '

So, this editor didn't participate in the
rush to buy multimedia tie-ins. He didn't
need to, because he’d already bought a
different piece of non-book entertainment:
book rights to a game named "Magic." This
is the first successful fantasy role-playing
game to be built around a deck of cards
(actually, many decks). During 1994, "Magic"
suddenly and mysteriously became known
to almost every child under 1 8 on the North
American continent; and achieved this with
only a tiny amount of advertising and
promotion.

Inevitably, there are now "Magic" books.

In fact, there will be one per month, and I
am told that the first has shipped 300,000
copies — ten times the number that the
publisher had expected. (That’s a bit more
successful than a similar attempt by the UK
company Games Workshop to cash in on
the success of their role-playing games.)

So what’s really going on, here? Are we
seeing a major shift in the tastes and
interests of teenagers for whom books have
become boring? Is speculative literature
destined to become a kind of subsidiary to
the visual media, feeding off a primary
audience created by products whose
conception is tawdry and unoriginal by the
standards of those who can still remember
plots of novels written before 1960?

B efore leaping to any alarmist

conclusions, it helps to remember that
while there have been a lot of CD-ROMs
(and a lot of text-only adventure games
before them), relatively few have sold more
than 10,000 copies. Also, going back to first
principles, the whole concept of interactive
entertainment is of unproven value. Its
exponents claim that consumers are eager
for the empowerment that they enjoy when
an adventure game offers them choices that
will determine the development of the
story. And yet, three experiments with
interactive television in selected US cities
have shown that TV viewers don’t want to
interact. They prefer to be entertained.

This doesn't necessarily mean that they
are being unimaginative or lazy. Consider
the nature of interactive storytelling. It
allows you, the reader, to determine how
the story unfolds as you explore an
imaginary world. This can be fun, but can it
provide the kind of storytelling catharsis
that readers are accustomed to? A story is

44

interzone January 1995

satisfying, generally speaking, when it
develops in response to the actions of
highly motivated characters. As soon as we
tamper with this relationship so that the
story responds to the actions of the reader,
the characters lose their authority and
become mere pawns on a playing field.

Similarly, when the reader is allowed to
follow one path among many, the writer can
no longer build dramatic tension, create
carefully orchestrated revelations, and lead
the reader to an ending which seems
satisfying because, in retrospect, it has an
air of inevitability.

Adventure games may seem to do more
than a mere book; but in the areas 1 have
summarized above, their structure forces
them to do much less.

We should remember that books survived
the advent of radio drama, motion pictures
and television. Right now, the threat posed
by CD-ROMs seems smaller, relatively
speaking, than the competition which those
other media created in the days when they
were new and full of new promise.

S ome changes certainly have occurred in
book publishing. Science fiction (I am
told by various American editors and
literary agents) is at its lowest ebb in 25
years. The demand for it simply isn't there
any more. Heroic fantasy rules, they say,
because readers are still not tired of reading
about wizards and princesses.

And yet, I wonder if the poor sales of
science fiction can be blamed, at least

partly, on the lack of contemporary
relevance irrthe material that editors are
selecting for publication. Most editors really
are not very enlightened when it comes to
new technologies. (Why else would they bid
seven million dollars for a CD-ROM tie-in?)
Likewise, many writers are surprisingly out
of touch. To the young reader who is savvy
about computers, BBSs, Nintendo games
and virtual reality, the typical science-
fiction novel seems curiously old-fashioned
— not because of its form, but because of
its content.

The few books that do show a genuinely
modern awareness of technology can sell
surprisingly well. Neal Stephenson's Snow
Crash, for instance; or (obviously) William
Gibson's trilogy commencing with
Neuromancer.

Recently, I conducted an experiment.
Interzone's editor, David Pringle, suggested
that I might be interested in guest-editing
one issue of this magazine. 1 was delighted
by this offer and decided that I would do a
"theme issue" focusing on the impact of
technology on human beings within the
next 20 years. 1 started actively soliciting
stories on this theme.

1 wasn't sure how much of a response I
would get, partly because Interzone is
considered a relatively obscure publication
in the United States (where 1 live), and
partly because I had been partially
convinced that science fiction is, in a sense,
"dead.” But 1 have found there is no
shortage of strong, interesting material,

intimately relevant to our times. There are
people who want to write it, and 1 believe
there is a reasonably large number of
people who want to read it. (We'll find out
for sure when the April 1995 issue of
Interzone is published, containing the
stories that I have chosen.)

N ow let me end on a small note of hope.

After the seven-million-dollar auction
took place, sanity was restored at least
partially when the Hearst Corporation
(which owns Morrow, the publisher that
made the winning bid) released a somewhat
apologetic and highly embarrassed
statement explaining that the editor who
had offered all that money was not actually
authorized to do so. Consequently, the
auction had to be held a second time. And
this time around, the bidding stopped at
one million dollars.

Of course, a million is still a huge sum.
But it’s seven times more rational than the
amount which had been bid a few weeks
previously, and in years to come, as the CD-
ROM fever gradually abates, publishers may
grow more rational still.

In the meantime, down here in the
bargain-basement world of Interzone, 1 have
a bunch of stories which are exactly the kind
of science fiction that I think is relevant and
important. And somehow, this matters a lot
more to me than the lemming-like buying
frenzies of an industry which seems
increasingly out of touch with its
readership. Charles Platt

interzone

The leading British magazine which specializes in SF and new fantastic writing.
Among many other writers, we have published

BRIAN ALDISS
J.G. BALLARD
IAIN BANKS
BARRINGTON BAYLEY
GREGORY BENFORD
MICHAEL BISHOP
DAVID BRIN

RAMSEY CAMPBELL
RICHARD COWPER
JOHN CROWLEY
THOMAS M. DISCH
MARY GENTLE
WILLIAM GIBSON
M. JOHN HARRISON

GARRY KILWORTH
DAVID LANGFORD
MICHAEL MOORCOCK
RACHEL POLLACK
KEITH ROBERTS
GEOFF RYMAN
BOB SHAW

JOHN SLADEK
BRIAN STABLEFORD
BRUCE STERLING
LISA TUTTLE
IAN WATSON
CHERRY WILDER
GENE WOLFE

interzone has introduced many excellent new writers, and illustrations, articles, interviews, film and book reviews, news, etc.
interzone is available from specialist bookshops, or by subscription. For six issues, send £15 (outside UK £18). For twelve
issues send £28 (outside UK £34). Single copies: £2.50 inc. p&p (outside UK, £2.80). American subscribers may send $27 for six
issues, or $52 for twelve issues. Outside Europe, copies are despatched by Air Saver (accelerated surface mail).

To: interzone 217 Preston Drove, Brighton, BN1 6FL, UK
Please send me six/twelve issues of Interzone, beginning with the
current issue. I enclose a cheque/p.o./international money order,
made payable to Interzone (delete as applicable)

OR please charge my credit card (Mastercard/Visa)

Card number

Expiry date Signature

Name

Address ..

f cardholder's address is different from the above, please include it on a separate sf

If you'd rather not cut up your magazine, feel free to photocopy this form, or even write the salient information on a separate sheet of paper.

interzone January 1995

45

|[t was] a peaceful night... I went to bed and was awakened by the
roar of the wind, the crash of the breakers... When it was light 1 went
down to see how it (the machine] had fared and found it scattered
about a field..."

Bill Frost, Western Mail, 1932.

I. THE STORM

The street door opened, and the rattle of the wind almost
drowned out his mother's voice.

"Jimmy!"

Jimmy Griffiths was lounging on his bed upstairs, reading
his London pamphlets. The draught, piercing the ill-fitting
window frames, was making his lamp flame flicker, '’What?"
"It's Bill Frost, here to see you..."

Bill Frost? Jimmy pushed his face closer to the murky type
of the pamphlets. "Mother, if he's trying to get me back into
his choir again, tell him Cm not interested."

"It's not the choir, Jimmy,” his mother said uncertainly.
"You'd better come down."

With an elaborate sigh, Jimmy threw his pamphlets down
on the crumpled blanket.

Downstairs his mother stood before the open door, her

small, nervous hands buried in her apron. The door from the
street opened straight into the parlour, and the wind was
intruding into the room like some invisible animal: rattling
the brasses on the range, clattering the framed prints from
the Graphic in their neat rows on the walls, and scattering
September leaves across the polished floor tiles. And the
doorway framed the unprepossessing figure of Bill Frost:
thinfaced, his lined mouth hidden by a tired moustache, a
drab tie knotted tight up against his throat.

"Bill says he couldn't think where else to go,” his

mother said.

Bill’s eyes were shadowed, like hollows in a log. Despite
himself, Jimmy's heart moved. "Is somebody ill?"

Bill Frost mumbled something, dropping his eyes.

"Bill wants your help," his mother said.

"Help with what?"

"With his machine." Her grey eyes seemed to be begging
him to go along with Bill, out into the storm. And why?- just
to avoid a little social awkwardness, no doubt.

Jimmy looked from one to other, a slow, familiar impa-
tience burning in him. Bill Frost was 47 years old: a deacon at
the chapel, the founder of the local choir, a sound carpenter,

46

interzone January 1995

and a good neighbour to his parents, he knew. And yet here
he was, so suppressed by his own provincial awkwardness
that he couldn't even speak for himself. In. God's name, this is
1895. In London, things are on the move. A new century is
nearly on us; blood is rising. You wouldn't think so, here on the
coast of Godforsaken Pembrokeshire!

"What bloody machine?" Jimmy snapped.

Frost mumbled again, looking down at his cap.

"What?”

"He said," his mother replied with dogged determination,
"his /lying machine."

Bill Frost's cottage was a quarter-mile further up St Bride's
Hill from the Griffiths's.

Bill marched stiffly up the path, his anxiety obvious in
every movement of his angular body. Buffeted by the air,
Jimmy pulled his cap down over his ears and followed.

It was eleven o’clock. There was a quarter-moon, its face
crossed by scudding clouds. The trees around Jimmy were
huge and invisible and moving in the dark winds, like ancient
giants. Behind him, the Hill swept down to Saundersfoot Bay,
and from the harbour rose the anxious tolling of a colliery

boat bell, the sustained crash of breakers.

After a hundred yards or so Bill turned off the path,
making towards Fred Watkins's farm.

"So," Jimmy shouted across the wind, "what about this
machine of yours, Bill?"

Bill turned his narrow head. "It crashed. The wheels caught
in the top branches of a tree. You know, that big ash at the
bottom of Fred Watkins's field
"What caught in the ash tree?"

"The wheels. The machine's wheels.”

Jimmy shivered. He pulled his jacket close around his
chest. Unexpectedly, he felt a little scared. Wheels in a tree?
Flying machines? What kind of closeted lunacy was he walking
into?

Bill went on, "1 thought I'd be safe to leave the machine in
the field until the morning, but then this wretched wind came
up, see."

Jimmy tried to laugh. "But it's not actually a flying
machine. I mean, you haven't made a machine that can really
fly. Have you, Bill?"

Bill turned his face into the wind. "Not if it can't clear a
bloody ash tree, I haven't."

interzone January 1995

47

Illustrations by Noel Bateman

Brigantia’s Angels

They reached Fred Watkins's field. This was wasteland,
really: dorrix, just weeds and trash. But there was something
here, jimmy saw: some kind of machinery - wreckage - scat-
tered over the grass. Silver moonlight glinted from polished,
finely-shaped wood, all over the field.

Bill knelt beside one of the larger pieces of wreckage. It
was shaped like a small boat, with flaps of wood - hinged
somehow - protruding from the sides. "Thank God," he said
fervently, his words snatched away by the wind. "We’re not
too late. I thought the storm might have smashed it all up by
now, see.”

limmy walked further into the field. There was one other
large piece of wreckage: another boat-shape, smaller than
the first. Lengths of cable lay scattered across the grass. It
looked as if the two boats had been strung together, some-
how, by the bits of cable. In the wind, the smaller boat had
scraped across the grass, leaving a trail of crushed blades.

Close up, Jimmy saw that the device did indeed have
wheels: simple, iron-rimmed wooden discs, fixed to a trolley
of crude axles under the smaller boat. And - he bent to see
there were twigs and leaves wrapped around the wheels.

Twigs and leaves, from an ash tree.

"Come on," Bill said. He got to his feet, brisk and nervous.
"Help me lift it up to the house. If we cover it all with
tarpaulin, it should be all right for the night."

He took hold of one end of the larger boat, the one with
the protruding side-flaps, limmy took the other end, and they
hefted the device off the ground. It was surprisingly light, and
Jimmy staggered.

"You go backwards," Bill shouted to him. "I'll guide you.
Careful, now..."

Jimmy, blinded by the rushing air, stumbled awkwardly
across the uneven ground.

They reached Frost's cottage; clean anthracite smoke rose
from its chimney to be whipped away by the turbulent air.

Jimmy, tripping over a step, allowed the boat to scrape
against the side of the house. A side-flap hit the wall, and
Jimmy heard the crackle of splintering wood.

Bill Frost cried out, as if in pain. "Bloody hell, boy, have a
care!”

Jimmy felt as shocked by Bill's swearing as by his own near
fall. "It's only one of those flaps, Bill."

" Flaps ' ? Dain it, that’s a bloody wing, boy. Now, be careful
what you're about..."

When he got home, Jimmy took a cup of tea up to bed, and
returned to his pamphlets.

At around one he heard the door open again, admitting
from the storm his father and older brother, George. The two
men were working shifts at the local colliery, Bonville's Court.
In their shabby jackets and crumpled trousers, they would be
wet, cold and weary, having been carried home along the
coast rail line by the open coal drams; and now Jimmy heard
the weary clatter of their boots, as they prepared for their
baths.

Jimmy pored over his political pamphlets, drinking in the
scent of their cheap ink, trying to escape in spirit from all this
grinding poverty, and soul-breaking work, and provincialism.

His father thought he was a rodni, he knew: strolling about
when real men were at their work, down the pits. But it wasn't
Jimmy's fault that he, of all of them, was the only one to have
the spirit and brains to escape the mines - wasn't his fault,
even, that he was "so bloody floity," as his father had end-

lessly drummed into him. He never had fit into this family.

But, if truth be told, his new job in London, as a pub-
lisher's clerk, was no great joy. And - though he would never,
ever admit as much - he knew he didn't really fit in there
either. In London, his Welshness stuck out like a sign pasted
to his head, he thought gloomily. But still, there in London
he was in the centre of things, surrounded by the pulsing,
evolving soul of the new age. He had literature from all the
major centres of radical London thought: the Social Demo-
cratic Federation, Morris's Socialist League, the Fabian Soci-
ety, and even one thin sheet from the Independent Labour
Party. Beyond the cottage's sturdy walls the wind still
swirled, like - he thought sleepily - London's eternal storm
of information and debate. Jimmy was 19 years old, and his
mind and heart were wide open to that intellectual tempest.
He could hardly bear to return, even for a visit like this, to the
restricted cage of Pembrokeshire; for him, Saundersfoot was
the past, and London the promise of the bright new century.

He doused his lamp and snuggled under his sheets; it was
best to be asleep before his brother came up to their shared
room. Jimmy had taken leave from work, and he'd told his
mother he would visit for another few days. He could always
pack his bags and clear off first thing in the morning, and get
back to the quick, exciting air of London...

But, as he waited for sleep to claim him, he couldn't stop
thinking of poor old Bill Frost. A flying machine in Saunders-
foot? What had the chap been thinking of?

It was all nonsense, of course. But he remembered, with
vague unease, those ash twigs in the machine's wheels.

II. MORNING

At a little after eight o'clock, Jimmy pulled on his jacket and
cap and stepped out of the cottage. The storm had blown
itself out. The sunlit air was crisp, invigorating, poised
between summer's richness and the ice of winter.

Jimmy looked down the wooded limbs of St Bride's Hill, to
where Saundersfoot hugged its crescent of beach; the sharp
white crests of waves glittered on the wrinkled ocean. The
view made for an exhilarating sweep, and for a moment
Jimmy imagined himself to be Bill Frost: to be leaving the
ground, here halfway up the Hill, like some heavy, cloth-
feathered bird; he would rise into the air, heading down the
Hill and into the breeze, off like billy-ho towards the Bay. For
an instant the vision was so real Jimmy felt as if his feet, light
and airy, were indeed lifting from the mundane grass like a
buckiboo, a dragon.

He smiled at himself. The vision passed, and he set off up
the Hill path.

He found Bill working in his garden, in shirtsleeves, braces
and cap; he had a pipe jammed in the corner of his small
mouth, and he wore his tie neatly knotted up to his throat.
Behind Bill, the garden - a neat, unimaginative square of
lawn - sloped down the hillside.

"Hello, Bill. 1 wanted to see if you were all right." Bill
greeted him with a handshake; his grip was firm, confident,
the palm heavily calloused. "I’m glad you came up,” Bill said
in his soft, melodic voice. "Thanks for coming out last night. 1
know you must have thought I’d gone a bit daft."

"It was nothing, Bill. 1

"No, I mean it." An intensity shone out of Bill's blue eyes
now, burning through his shyness; Jimmy, jolted, realized
that Bill meant every word with a passion, and there wouldn't
be many occasions in his life when Jimmy would be the recip-

intcrzone January 1995

ient of such gratitude. "If you hadn’t helped, that wind would
have smashed up my machine, and that would have been
that."

limmy, embarrassed, tried not to laugh. "You could have
built another.”

"No. 1 couldn't afford the materials." He leaned closer to
Jimmy, conspiratorial. "Anyway, it’s Edna, you see. She thinks
all this business of flying about is a bit daffy. Particularly
after that letter from the War Office. Still, it was good of her
to get Fred Watkins to let me use his field. Edna’s a Watkins
herself, you know.” He straightened up, the morning sunlight
catching his shock of grey hair. "As it turned out, thanks to
you, the machine is almost intact. There’s only that one wing,
really, that took a bit of a knock, and the cabling wants fixing,
of course. Do you want to come and have a look at it? It's just
round here...”

Bill wiped his hands on a cloth, and led Jimmy around the
corner of the house. And there - close to a small potting
shed, in the shadow of straggling raspberry canes - stood the
flying machine.

The whole thing was suspended off the ground, on crude
wooden trestles. The two boat-like devices Jimmy remem-
bered from last night were arranged one atop the other, their
prows pointing in parallel down the Hill. Bill pointed out the
machine's components to Jimmy. The cradle - the smaller
wheeled boat - was at the bottom, near the ground, with the
gondola - the larger section, with its "wings” of wood, one
smashed - suspended above. Wood gleamed, shaped, planed
and polished; the whole thing looked like some elaborate
piece of furniture, Jimmy thought.

Bill stepped forward and climbed easily into the cradle,
ducking his head to avoid the wings. He smiled at Jimmy
around his pipe, his face a little flushed. "This is how 1 stood
last night, you see, limmy. Of course I've got to replace all
the cables yet, but you can imagine how it looked, can’t you?
The wind off the sea felt just right; and it's the wind that lifts
up the machine, you see."

“The wind?" Jimmy looked up at the wings uncertainly. The
machine seemed so real - solid and finished - here in the
autumn sunlight. Jimmy dug deep into his soul, searching for
a little scepticism. "What do you do, flap those wooden wings
and take off like a bird?”

"Of course not. I told you, it’s the wind you need. See those
tanks up there?”

Jimmy leaned forward and peered up through the gon-
dola's open base, to see a series of cylindrical tanks fixed
inside the framework.

"Hydrogen," Bill said softly. "Just to get me off the ground.
Of course I have to pedal a bit too."

"Pedal?"

"And when I’m up, I tilt the wings forward and tip into the
wind." He made a swooping motion through the air with his
broad hand. "And off I go like billy-ho, just like a seagull, eh?"
He sighed. "And if it hadn’t been for Fred Watkins's bloody
ash tree I’d have made it clear across the Bay to Stepaside, I
tell you."

Jimmy became aware of his mouth gaping open, as he
stared at Bill Frost inside the remains of his flying machine.
He had no idea what to say.

Bill eyed him, some of his shyness returning. "You’re inter-
ested in all this, aren't you, Jimmy?”

"Interested? Ah

Bill squinted up at the snapped wing. "I'll spend some

interzone January 1995

49

Brigantia’s Angels

time on her this evening, before the light goes. There’s just
that wing to fix, and load up the tanks again, and fix those
cables... She'll be ready for another shot by the weekend,
probably. You know, with just another couple of feet - if I'd
been a few years younger and a bit less tizzicky - 1 would have
been over that bloody ash tree. Well. What do you say?"

limmy felt disconcerted. "What do you mean?"

Again, that painful shyness seemed to descend on Bill,
and the carpenter averted his eyes. "Jimmy, would you like to
give me a hand?"

III. THE PATENT

So for the next few evenings, after Bill got back from his
employment up at the colliery-owners' folly, Hean Castle,
Jimmy worked on the flying machine.

Slowly the machine took shape once more, as Bill laced
the cradle and gondola together with his lengths of cable,
limmy grew fascinated by the machine itself, by the crafts-
manship in it, as if it were some kind of sculpture. The sur-
faces, lovingly fashioned by Frost's strong hands, were
polished so deep that the light off the sea seemed to sink
into the curved wood; the joints and pegs were as finely
worked as if it were a bit of Chippendale. Whether it flew or
not, the machine was certainly a bloody beautiful piece of
work, (immy thought.

Jimmy saw slowly that the machine - or, more fundamen-
tally, the idea of flying - was a fixed compass-point in Bill's
thoughts. But it wasn't an obsession. Bill was a chapel elder,
and he took one evening a week off from his machine to
coach his male-voice choir.

No, he wasn’t obsessed, or mad. Bill Frost simply wanted
to fly.

"Why, Bill?"

Bill Frost straightened up from the gondola, kneading the
muscles at the base of his spine; the coals of his pipe
glowed. "Why what?"

"Why fly?"

With one hand resting against the flank of his machine,
Bill looked across the fold of the Bay, to the north. "Well, I'll
tell you, then," he said. "It was many years ago. I was quite a
young lad still, but already in the trade. I was working up at
Hean then, too, as it happens.

"I'd just cut a plank of pine, and I was carrying it, see,
across the front of Hean. Suddenly there was a wind - a gust,
really, straight up off the Bay. Well, it picked up that plank,
with me clinging to it, and lifted us both straight up into the
air, I swear by five or six feet or more. And then it let me
down, as gentle as you like."

He turned to Jimmy, his eyes deepened by the gloom. "So
there you are. I've flown once already, you see. And it was
such a bloody marvellous feeling, I said to myself, 'Why, 1
want to do that again'." He slapped the solid flank of his
machine. "And that's what this is all about."

limmy shook his head. "But, Bill, you don't know anything
about flying. You don't have any scientific education."

"Neither did that plank, I reckon," Bill said. "And neither do
the seagulls that wheel around the Bay. You don’t need sci-
ence to fly. All you need is a wind to lift you, and a way to
catch the wind. And 1 knew I had the hands, the craft to do it."
He smiled. "So this machine is part seagull, and part furni-
ture, you see. Just like me, I suppose.

"Anyway," he said, "I'm as scientific as you like. I’ve

got a Patent, you know."

"You're joking.”

Bill looked shocked. "Never. And there's my letter from the
War Office. Do you want to see?"

It was a real Patent, all right: Number 20,431, dated October
25th, 1894. In the fading light, Jimmy read out the certificate:
"'A FLYING MACHINE. William Frost, Carpenter and Builder,
Saundersfoot, Pembrokeshire, do hereby declare the nature
of this invention to be as follows..."'

"I filed it as soon as I had the design," Bill said. "The thing
itself wasn't even half-built back then."

"And the War Office?"

"Well, I sent the Patent there. I thought the Secretary of
State might make something out of it."

Bill produced his War Office letter. It was from an Under
Secretary, Mr St John Brodrick. Bill was thanked, but, Jimmy
read out, "'This nation does not intend to adopt aerial navi-
gation as a means of warfare.'"

limmy shook his head; he felt a bubble of humour rise
inside him, but he was unsure whether he was laughing at
Frost, or Brodrick, or himself. "Bloody English. He had no
arrant, no right, to speak to you like that, Bill." Of course the
English would dismiss a Patent for a flying machine, coming
from some unknown mining village in Wales. But there
seemed to be real pain etched in Bill's face, as he looked over
his letter from Mr St John Brodrick. Suddenly Jimmy felt his
mockery of Bill melt away, and resentment at the dismissal of
Bill's life work by this London functionary merged with his
own uneasy sense of displacement.

He laid a hand on Bill's shoulder. "Never mind, Bill," he
said. "Another couple of days and your machine will be wing-
ing it around the Bay with the seagulls, just as you say. That
will show them."

And what, an inner voice warned, will you say to this old fool
when the bloody thing won't even leave the ground?

Bill turned to him, his pipe discarded. “Yes," he said
evenly. "This time, it's going to fly with no mistake."

"Of course you will. And -"

"No," Bill said sharply. "Not me. I've been thinking. I'm a
bit of a broker now, see, Jimmy. I’m worn out. My legs and
lungs just aren’t what they were 20 years ago. And I get
tizzicky with my chest in the winter... No, I can't do it; I’ll just
end up in the ash tree again."

“I don’t understand," Jimmy said slowly.

"You're going to have to fly the machine for me, Jimmy Grif-
fiths.”

IV. THE FURNITURE SEAGULL

It was a fine morning, a late September Saturday.

In the middle of Fred Watkins's field, Jimmy Griffiths stood
in the lower cradle of the restored flying machine, his feet
resting on the two pedals set in the base. He was taller than
Bill Frost, and his head kept bumping against the walls of the
upper, winged gondola. The two table-leaf wings were tilted
upwards on their hinges, folded neatly away against the gon-
dola's gleaming flanks. Rubber pipes snaked up from Bill's
home-made feeder tanks into the cylinders of hydrogen gas
fixed inside the gondola.

The cradle rested on its wheels - now freed of ash twigs -
and the upper gondola was supported by its trestles, trans-
ported from Bill Frost's garden. Bill and George, Jimmy’s
brother, stood to either side of the trestles, steadying the

50

interzone January 1995

Stephen Baxter

gondola.

Now the breeze picked up. The machine creaked a little, a
deep wooden sound, and there was a smell of wood chip-
pings and polish. The breeze was coming off the sea and
straight up St Bride's Hill; looking down over the Hill now,
Jimmy could see gulls floating effortlessly over an ocean of
crumpled silk.

Jimmy wondered what he was doing here.

Of course he didn't believe that Bill's machine was actually
going to work today; and many times in the last few days he
had come to regret his sentimental impulse to waste so
much time with the carpenter. It had all been a bit of a lark,
he supposed.

But now it came to it, he found he didn't have the heart to
walk away from Bill and his foolishness - not without trying.

Then the machine strained again, as if yearning to be free
of this imprisoning ground.

...And what if it's true? What if I really am going to fly,
today? He remembered his odd, momentary vision of flying,
that first morning looking down over the Hill. Wouldn't it be
glorious, though? He felt a tiny window of doubt open up in
his heart, and a small part of him began to wonder - in hope,
for Bill's sake - if this bit of furniture really was, impossibly,
going to leave the ground.

"...You must be bloody tapped, Jimmy Griffiths," George
murmured sourly.

Jimmy looked down at his brother, beside the trestle.
George's expression was full of its usual vicious humour, and
Jimmy felt immediately absurd.

"If it's so mad, why are you here then?" he said defiantly.

"To watch you make an idiot of yourself, of course." George
sniffed. "And to carry you home when you bust your bloody
leg. Father always said you were a floit, Jimmy."

"Flighty, eh," Jimmy snapped back. "Well, maybe you're
going to be right for once, George."

But George's stolid face - round, coal-streaked under its
battered cap - was like a dark, Earth-bound moon, its sour
gravity holding Jimmy forever to the ground. Oh, wouldn't it
be wonderful if, just for once, George could be proved spec-
tacularly, finally wrong?

Then, as if in response to Jimmy's silent plea, the machine
shuddered in the breeze; Jimmy rattled in the cradle, and had
to grip its polished rim...

And - unexpectedly, alarmingly - there was a surge, faint
and weak, upwards: so delicate Jimmy wasn’t sure if he was
imagining it, so even it was like being a child again, swept up
by his father's arms.

George stumbled forward, suddenly dragged by the
machine across the grass. "Bloody hell," he said, his mouth a
round pit in his face.

“What?"

"You've lifted off the trestles, man." George staggered, his
arms straining at the cradle. "1 don’t believe it. You're in the
bloody air, Jimmy.”

"Pedal, Jim!" Bill Frost's tie knot had slipped a few degrees
around his neck. He pulled free the gas feeder lines, and
Jimmy heard valves close with a snap; then Bill staggered
away from the machine. "You're up! Pedal, man!"

Jimmy gripped the walls of the cradle and pushed at the
two paddle-shaped foot-pedals beneath him. The pedals
worked wide creaking fans of shaped wood. The pedals took a
bit of effort to get moving, but once the fans were spinning
pushing air down in a wash towards the ground - it got a lot

interzone January 1995

Brigantia’s Angels

easier, no harder than riding a heavy bicycle.

The machine lurched sideways, to Jimmy’s left. His feet
slipped off the pedals and he almost fell over the wall of the
cradle; its hard rim dug into his ribs, through his jacket.

"Let go!" Bill screamed at George. "You’re pulling him
over! Let go!”

George, Jimmy realized, was still hanging onto the side of
the cradle, his arms upstretched, his knuckles white. Now
George opened his fists and staggered backwards from the
machine.

Released, the machine tipped violently the other way, and
the cables between cradle and gondola hummed and
creaked. For a few seconds limmy could do no more than
cling on, as the cradle bobbed in the air like a cork on water.

Then, at last, the machine steadied, leaving the cradle
twisting from side to side in its nest of cables.

"Pedal, Jimmy! Keep pedalling!" Bill called.

Jimmy pushed at his pedals, and once more the fans
creaked into motion. He glanced down. The bottom of the
cradle was open, and - through the cradle’s open structure,
beyond his trouser legs and muddied shoes - he could see a
square of sunlit grass: a square which slid away beneath him.

He was in the air!

Still pedalling, he peered over the side. It was as if he
stood at the top of an invisible staircase, looking down at
George. Jimmy felt a surge of triumph. George's dark disc of a
face, turned up towards the machine, looked like a doll's
face, scoured of all its scepticism, devoid at last of its lifelong
ability to tether Jimmy to the ground.

"You're not flying yet, Jimmy Griffiths." Bill Frost's voice,
floating up from the ground, was like a reedy tenor emerging
from some invisible choir. "You've not got enough height.
Keep pedalling, boy!”

So Jimmy pedalled, the sweat pooling around his collar.
The machine, with its rotating fans and gas cylinders, lifted
him easily upwards. And now limmy was so high that he
could see the whole of Fred Watkins's field in one glance,
spread out like a green handkerchief beneath him. Bill and
George, and the machine’s empty trestles and Bill’s bags of
tools, were no more than a little cluster in the receding grass,
like an abandoned nest.

Suddenly the breeze picked up, bumping against the
machine. The wind seemed stiffer, up here away from the
grass, and suddenly the machine felt like a fragile thing
indeed, bobbing like a thistledown in the air. Jimmy had a
rushing vision of the machine as he’d first seen it, smashed
and strewn across Fred Watkins’s field. Somehow he hadn’t
considered the possibility of falling before; now, though, he
thought about it with a vengeance. What if the machine was
to tumble out of the air again, now, with him in it?

"The wings, Jimmy!” Bill Frost had cupped toy hands
around his tiny mouth; his voice floated up out of the huge
landscape. "You’re high enough. Pull the lever!"

The lever. The lever was a length of wood before his face. In
a panic, Jimmy pulled at it, hard.

The wings of wood spread out over his head, dropping on
their creaking hinges away from the sides of the gondola.

"Now tilt! Tilt them down!"

Jimmy pulled at the lever again, and the wings, stiffly,
tipped downwards, pointing their polished leading edges
towards the ground.

The machine fell, so suddenly that Jimmy felt his stomach
lurch... But he wasn't falling downwards, he realized; he was

falling across the air, gliding down like a seagull towards the
ground.

Bill Frost was shouting again, but Jimmy remembered what
to do. He shoved at his lever, making the wings tilt upwards.
They shuddered as they caught at the air, and the cradle
twisted in its cables. But the machine rose again, and the air
pushed at his face.

The ash tree at the bottom of Watkins’s field sailed
beneath him, its crown passing safely beneath the cradle's
wheels.

"Well," limmy breathed, "what do you think of this, then,
George? I’m bloody flying after all."

He worked at his lever, and the flying machine dipped and
soared in the air, just like a stiff furniture seagull. It was
utterly quiet up here, as if he were suspended in some bub-
ble of glass: isolated with only his own ragged breathing, the
creak of the wings' hinges, the singing of the breeze in the
cables.

He rose fifty, a hundred feet, and St Bride’s Hill unfolded
beneath him like a curving breast. Glancing down, he could
see George and Bill scrambling over the Hill after him, small
and unimportant, evoking a sharp boyhood memory of
wooden soldiers tumbling down a counterpafie.

Saundersfoot Bay spread itself beneath him. From up here
the shape of the land was clear. He could see the Bay's cres-
cent of captured sea, with the harbour structures like shad-
ows on the palm of the land’s cupping hand. The folded
landscape itself seemed complex and dynamic - as if he were
looking down at a photograph, a frozen slice out of the life of
some immense, ancient organism. Once - he'd read in Lon-
don - all of Pembrokeshire had been an ocean floor. But time
and ice had compressed that old ocean into strata, into lay-
ers of rock that had at last twisted up and come busting
through the grass and sand like splintered bone, hard and
defiant. And, from up here, he saw how all of human history
was compressed into thin layers too, overlying the geology.
Here the old tribes had walked: the Cambrae, the Ordovices,
the Silures, tribes who had bequeathed their names to the
geological layers into which later men had split time.

How apt it was, he thought wildly, that he had launched
into the air from St Bride's Hill! For St Bride was no more
than a Christianized memory of Brigantia, the oldest of the
Saxon goddesses: Brigantia, goddess of the Earth, and
spring, and light. Under a thin patina of Christianity, Brigan-
tia was still here, with aji her Neolithic grandmothers: he
could feel it up here, her ancient green soul soaked into the
timesculpted, layered landscape.

He laughed out loud, and the air-bubble around him con-
tained his voice, making it loud in his ears. By leaving the
ground he had become something immortal, he thought: an
angel of Brigantia!

He lay on the cool grass, laughing, staring up at the clouds
and feeling the Earth rotate under him, as light as a thistle-
down itself.

The faces of Bill and George loomed over him: two moons,
round with wonder, eclipsing the Sun. Jimmy saw envy and
pride mixing in Bill's watery gaze.

"How was it, Jimmy? How was it?"

"It was marvellous, Bill," he said. "Bloody marvellous. But I
can’t tell you. You'll have to try it for yourself, tizzicky chest
or not.” He was seized by a sudden passion, an echo of his

52

interzone January 1995

Stephen

rediscovery of Brigantia. ‘'And that ought to show those
English with their letters and their War Office. Get Mr St John
bloody Brodrick to come out here, and stand where you
stood, and watch me flying like a seagull, and then tell him to
write his letters, eh?"

Bill looked reflective. 'They’ll never do that, Jimmy,” he
said gently. "You know the English think we’re all tapped, the
whole lot of us this side of the Severn.” He stroked the flank
of his flying machine. "Flying is what this is about. That’s all."

"It's not all, dain it," Jimmy said. He got to his feet; he felt
infused by vigour, by a strength pulsing out of the ancient,
sculpted land from which he had flown. "If the bloody English
won't come to us, then let's go to them,” he shouted. "Let's
take our flying machines and soar over their heads, blocking
out the Sun! What do you say, Bill? George?"

Bill seemed to shy away within himself, suddenly every bit
the humble local carpenter, the timid church elder.

But George was grinning.

V. THE ANGELS OF BRIGANTIA

The third Marquess of Salisbury, Prime Minister of Great
Britain, was a man of regular habits (so Jimmy Griffiths
learned from his circle of scurrilous friends in London). Each
day Salisbury hurried through the London traffic to catch his
seven o'clock train from King's Cross, up to his residence at
Hatfield.

Thus, one Friday in the late spring of 1896, Lord Salisbury,
in his greatcoat, came down the stairs of the Foreign Office at
a little after half past six of the evening. A messenger threw
open the door of a single-horsed brougham; and as soon as
the Prime Minister was on board, the trained horse started at
full speed. And off went the brougham: under the Horse
Guards’ Arch, along Whitehall, and towards Trafalgar Square
and the bustle of Charing Cross Road...

But today was different.

Londoners - clerks and shop assistants and drapers, hur-
rying for their trains and omnibuses home from work paused
on Westminster and Lambeth Bridges, to peer past the
ornate walls of Parliament at the odd events taking place in
the river.

From a Welsh coal ketch called the Verbena, stationed
close to Lambeth Bridge, a box of wood rose awkwardly into
the air. To the watchers on the Bridges, the object looked like
a piece of furniture, unusually propelled upwards. But then
quite unexpectedly - the box sprouted wings; and it dipped
towards the water and up again, in the manner of a bird.

It was a flying machine, and it carried - people saw, point-
ing -a man, a dour-looking, thin-faced fellow in a cap.

And now, up from the ketch, there rose another machine:
and another, and a fourth. Soon the four furniture seagulls
were wheeling over the Thames, and their occupants called
out to each other in a lilting accent.

The machines formed up into a rough diamond shape, like
a flock of wooden geese. And off they soared: over Parlia-
ment, past Westminster Bridge, and along Whitehall, dipping
and swooping.

Jimmy Griffiths took the lead, with, at his shoulder, his
brother George. Behind them flew Teddy Poole, a cockle-
picker from Monkstone, and Harold Read, son of a ship-
builder and a power in the Stepaside rugby team.

The heart of London was laid out below Jimmy like a glit-
tering map. The traffic was snarling up, he saw, as the drivers

Baxter

and passengers, of broughams and phaetons and omnibuses,
stopped to stare at the crowded sky. There were a hundred, a
thousand faces turned up at him like coins, lit with wonder;
once again, Jimmy felt the awesome power of flight pulsing
through his soul.

And there - nearing the top of Whitehall and quite distinc-
tive - was Salisbury's brougham.

He shouted to the others and pointed down. Teddy Poole
waved and called back, his voice carrying small and perfect
across the upper air: "Good shooting, boys!"

The four machines circled like kestrels over the brougham.
From a bag at his waist Jimmy pulled out a lump of coal:
good Saundersfoot anthracite, glassy and hard, the best coal
in the bloody world.

He hurled the lump down at the brougham.

The coal missed the brougham by a dozen feet, so he
reached into his bag to haul out another. Soon the anthracite
was spattering down onto the road like a dark rain. It was dif-
ficult to aim, but Jimmy had the satisfaction of seeing a cou-
ple of his shots, at least, clatter against the brougham's
polished top. And Teddy Poole, with a whoop, laid one shot
slap on the horse's exposed thigh; the poor beast whinnied
and lurched forward, rattling the brougham like a shoebox.

When his coal was exhausted, Jimmy hauled at his lever
and wheeled for one last time over the brougham. He yelled
down at the Prime Minister, as loud as he could: "'This nation
does not intend to adopt aerial navigation as a means of war-
fare!'"

Then, laughing, he led his angels of Brigantia away,
towards the open spaces of St James's Park.

VI. CAPPER’S FLYERS

"Ah, but do you remember that day?" Bill asked.

Jimmy smiled, and lifted his face to the afternoon sun. The
Frosts' two goats, tethered at the bottom of Bill's famous gar-
den, nibbled at the grass. The growling noise of Stanley
Scourfield's delivery van floated up from the bottom of St
Bride's Hill; Jimmy knew it was the butcher's, because that
was still the only van in Saundersfoot.

"Yes. Yes, 1 do. It was bloody marvellous, Bill."

"Now, you know I’m not a cruel man, Jimmy. But I’d have
given a great deal to see the face of that old ass Lord Salis-
bury as Welsh coal came hurtling out of the sky all around
him!" Bill Frost wiped tears from his weakening eyes. Sixty-
three years old now, he was still more gaunt and grey than
ever. Jimmy saw how the cuffs of Bill's suit were threadbare
and patched. Well, Bill had never been flush with money -
and he still wasn't, it seemed, despite the success of his
invention. "You don't come home much these days, Jimmy."

"Well, I've my job in London."

"Still working on the newspapers?”

"I'm a deputy editor now." Suddenly limmy was aware of
how flat - how English - he had let his accent become, with
time. He pressed on, "And I’ve got a family, a wife and a
daughter, half grown she is. We live in Ealing, which is -"

"And what about your family here?"

limmy sat back in his chair, and looked out over the
expanse of St Bride's Hill, down towards the Bay. "Well, we’ve
taken in Vickerman’s pit ponies, to let them graze our garden.
This strike’s hitting us hard, Bill."

"It's hurting a lot of folk around here."

The coal field strike had started a year earlier - in 1910 —
when a band of miners at Tonypandy, in the Rhondda, had

interzone January 1995

53

got themselves locked out after haggling over a price list.
Now, 30,000 men were locked out or on strike, right across
South Wales. There had been a lot of trouble - even in sleepy
places like Saundersfoot - what with the owners' attempts to
bring in blacklegs. The police and troops had been kept busy,
and there was even an Army general put in charge of keeping
order in the area - "as if we were all a bunch of bloody Boer
farmers," as Jimmy's father had complained.

"It's hard for George," Jimmy said. "He spends his days dig-
ging coal off the beach with his mates. George can’t put up
with this, with idleness. Well, you know George. He never was
the most reflective man in the world...”

He heard a thrumming noise, a soft pulsing that rose from
over the crest of the Hill behind them. Jimmy glanced at Bill;
the old carpenter merely lifted his face to the light.

Jimmy stood up and walked down the slope to the middle
of the garden, and looked back towards the crest of the Hill.

A dozen Army Flyers came soaring over St Bride's Hill
towards the Bay, a hundred feet in the air, their polished
wings tilting smoothly into the light wind. The large, petrol-
driven fans set in the Flyers' bases shushed easily through
the air.

From the leading Flyer, a soldier's goggled face returned
lirhmy's stare, expressionless.

"There must be trouble in Saundersfoot again," Bill Frost
said.

Jimmy shielded his eyes and squinted up at the machines.
"Those are Capper Flyers," he said. "Model E, I think." Each
powerful enough to carry two English soldiers: refined ver-
sions of Capper’s first fighting craft, themselves a major
advance over Bill's prototype design - machines which had
swept over the Transvaal in 1899, winning the war against the
Boer republics in a matter of months. Arid now the Flyers car-

ried English soldiers - like khaki-clad angels, with guns
mounted in their Flyers' cradles - to subdue Saundersfoot’s
leer: the hungry Welsh miners, that rabble of "undeserving
poor," as even Jimmy's own paper called them.

limmy remembered his excitement - his radical, intellec-
tual rage - at the age of 19, at the turn of the century, when
he’d first left home for London. But it was gone now: all
gone, limmy was still only 35 - younger than Bill Frost had
been in the days of their great adventure, he realised - but
those moments of flight, when he had soared like a gull,
seemed long ago. Now the years, and his responsibilities,
had finally bound him to the Earth for ever.

And the 20th century didn't seem so bloody wonderful,
now he was in it.

limmy walked up the garden, slowly. He sat down with Bill
Frost. "Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if 1
hadn't come out to help you, that stormy night. There might
be no flying machines yet, eh?" And would we be better off, I
wonder? "But 1 suppose you should still be proud, Bill. With-
out you..."

But Bill had closed his eyes and seemed to have drifted to
sleep: perhaps dreaming, Jimmy wondered, of that distant
day at Hean Castle when a gust of wind had swept up a pine
plank and a frightened, astonished young carpenter.

Behind him, the Capper Flyers swept steadily down St
Bride's Hill towards the lights of Saundersfoot.

Stephen Baxter vies with Brian Stableford for the title of most pro-
lific Interzone author, with nearly 20 stories in these pages over the
past eight years (including a two-parter, "The Baryonic Lords," in
issues 49-50). His forthcoming sixth novel, Timeships (HarperCollins,
April 1995), is a centenary sequel to H. G. Wells's The Time Machine.
He lives in Prestwood, Bucks.

The 1993 and 1994 Hugo Award Winner!

Science Fiction Chronicle

Publishes all the SF/Fantasy/Horror News That Will Fit!

Each monthly issue of Andrew Porter's Science Fiction Chronicle, published since 1979, brings you all the news: who's
written what, what editors are buying, where artists are showing their work, awards, conventions, news of fandom, a
monthly convention calendar', 550+ book reviews a year of US and UK books and small press publications, interviews with
Mary Gentle, Storm Constantine, Paul McAuley, Guy Gavriel Kay, others.

There's more: 3 US market report updates a year and an annual UK market report — the most complete in the field, bar
none— for hopeful or established writers, letters, Jeff Rovin's S.FCinema on the world of Hollywood and TV, obituaries,
for bookbuyers a monthly Buyer's Guide, in advance, of forthcoming SF, fantasy and horror titles, with prices and covers,
from both large and small US publishers. Plus World Fantasy and Bram Stoker winning Stephen Jones & Jo Fletcher’s
British Report, also with many cover repros and photos, keeps you up to date on books and events in the UK.

All in a package that's attractive and well-designed, with minimal use of continued lines. Every issue has a full color
artwork cover, featuring some of the best artwork in SF and fantasy, by artists including Don Maitz, J.K. Potter, Kelly
Freas, Ed Emshwiller, David Mattingly, Barclay Shaw, Bob Eggleton, and Tom Kidd.

Issues are Airmailed to the UK, so you get them within a week of publication. And, they're sealed in polybags for added
protection from the Postal authorities. SFC has been a Hugo Award nominee 1 3 times; its editor received Special
Committee Awards from both the 1991 World SF and the 1992 British Fantasy Conve ntions. Subscribe today!

Cheques payable to Algol Press. Post to Ms. Ethel Lindsay, 69 Barry Rd, Carnoustie Angus DD7 7QQ
d 1 Year (12 issues) only £25; d 2 Years (24 issues) only £47

Name

Address

Postcode

54

interzone January 1995

CULTS OF
UNREASON

David V.Barrett, one-time editor of the sf
anthology Digital Dreams, has unconvincingly
denied any connection with "the first adult
magazine for CD-ROM users" (complete with
a CD of computer pom), titled Digital Dreams.

Robert Bloch died on 23rd September 1994
aged 77 ... not unexpectedly; his terminal
illness was announced weeks earlier at the
World SF Convention. I hardly need say how
universally liked he was, let alone mention
Psycho. His 1962 collection of fan pieces The
Eighth Stage of Fandom (recently reprinted) is
still huge fun.

Arthur C. Clarke was nominated for the
Nobel Peace Prize, partly, it seems, on the
ground that geosynchronous satellites have
helped get world leaders talking to each
other. "Hi Fidel, this is Bill." He did not win.

L. Ron Hubbard continues to rampage
unchecked. The 1994 American Booksellers'
Association (ABA) thrash was preceded by a
10th anniversary Writers of the Future celeb-
ration held at the Scientology "Celebrity
Center" in Hollywood. Sf people were less
than cheered by frequent mentions of Scien-
tology during the very long awards ceremony,
still less the closing call for "three cheers for
L. Ron Hubbard... hip, hip, hooray!" The
World SF Convention saw a lot of grumbling
about the increasing visibility of Scientology
in connection with the WotF contests.

Jerry Poumelle s secret career in sports
writing is revealed on the blurb page of Poul
Anderson's Harvest of Stars, which identifies
Poumelle as co-author of Football. I have yet
to trace his collaborative venture about off-
track betting, The Tote in God's Eye.

Carl Sagan may safely be called a BHA or
Butt-Head Astronomer, ruled )udge J. Baird
of the US District Court for Central California
as he threw out Sagan’s libel suit against
Apple (seepast columns): "One does not
seriously attack the expertise of a scientist
using the undefined phrase •butt-head*."

Charles Stross, rising author, might or might
not have read the recent fudge Dredd spinoff
novel featuring a minor character called
Chuck Strozza who wanders pathetically
around the plot trying to show people his
wads of print-out ... but later gains Stature.

Karl Edward Wagner died of liver failure on
1 5th October. He was only 48. Besides his
own horror novels and stories, he is fondly
remembered for editing The Year’s Best
Horror annually since 1980. This anthology
series often drew on Interzone and the British
small press: Karl was highly sympathetic to
"borderline’’ work, though he liked to pull
such authors’ legs by saying the story was
too tame and that "I added a final paragraph
with zombies and chainsaws, since this was
an obvious oversight on your part..."

Janny Wurts was disconcerted during her
recent UK trip when, giving a reading of her
work which had been carefully advertised as
a reading of her work, she was interrupted by
an audience member denouncing all
readings as unhelpful, uninformative and. a
waste of time. Interzone's very own Chris
Gilmore had struck again!

Jane Yolen continues to be interestingly
publicized: her novel Briar Rose was burned
by anti-gay activists on the steps of the
Kansas City Board of Education building.

"My first book burning. I am torn between
being proud and being disgusted.”

INFINITELY

IMPROBABLE

New Horizons in Geography. From
Remembrance Day by Brian Aldiss: "She wore
large bronze earrings made in an obscure
country which rattled when she laughed." A
correspondent asks, "Is it time for Aldiss to
write another travel book?”

British Fantasy Award ... the August Derleth
Award for best fantasy novel was presented
this year to Ramsey Campbell for The Long
Lost; it must be getting time to change the
name to the Ramsey Again Award.

Hugo Footnote. As champagne corks
popped for the SF Encyclopedia, (ohn Clute
also cheered Kim Stanley Robinson’s Green
Mars victory: "The nerve of it, winning a
Hugo for a book which the razor-sharp
cutting-edge gurus on the Arthur C. Clarke
Awards panel didn't even shortlist. This is a
direct consequence of the taste, wit and
judgement for which they have become so
extremely thoroughly known. (You can quote
me.)"

Secrets of Prophecy. Pat Murphy, asked at a
Readercon panel what coming future
developments sf writers have missed: "Well,
we- missed them..." At the same event Nancy
Kress told of the most differently flattering
invitation she'd ever received, to join the
team for Robert Silverberg’s Murasaki
anthology (also featuring Anderson, Bear,
Benford, Brin, Pohl): "We have to have a
woman, or we're going to get killed!”

Give Me Liberty. The Prometheus Award for
libertarian sf judges achievement by Troy
weight: the novel of the year (L. Neil Smith's
Pallas ) wins half an ounce in gold, while
owing to inflation a mighty all-time Hall of
Fame award (Yevgeny Zamyatin, for We)
rates only 0. 1 oz. You can't take it with you.

More Clarke Award Nominees. Help! I
should never have started this, but out of
fairness here are the rest of the submitted
books — so far. HarperCollins: Brian Aldiss,
Somewhere East of Life. Hodder/NEL: Gene
Wolfe, Lake of the Long Sun and C aide of the
Long Sun. Millennium: Kristine Kathryn
Rusch, Alien Influences ; Bruce Sterling, Heavy

Ansible

David Langford

Weather. Orbit: David Garnett, Stargarnetts-,
Mary Gentle, Left to His Own Devices; Rachel
Pollack, Temporary Agency. Pan: Poul
Anderson, Harvest of Stars-, Eric Brown,
Engineman; Peter F. Hamilton, A Quantum
Murder. But erstwhile winner Pat Cadigan
doesn't care any more: "I've had Arthur C.
Clarke, and he's almost good enough for me,
too. You dog."

Fairly Unique. It is to be hoped that Harlan
Ellison never sees the Guardian obituary by
Maxim lakubowski stating that Robert Bloch
"will probably remain the only writer to have
won prestigious awards across the spectrum
of the sf, mystery, horror and fantasy fields."

Speaking of Newspapers: several people
quizzed me about my early-September
Guardian sf reviews, whose creative
subeditor had transposed the phrase "Good
fun nevertheless" from a review of Eric
Brown's Engineman to that of Andrew
Harman’s The Tome Tunnel, which
emphatically was not good fun nevertheless.
Christopher Priest topped this with a story of
his similarly cramped column for the Oxford
Mail — five books to be covered in 50 words
each. When he begged a special
dispensation to devote his entire space to
one book, it was granted: after which
frowning subeditors cut his single 250-word
review to the permitted wordcount of 50....

Ten Years Ago, at the launch of The SF
Sourcebook edited by David W ingrove: "What
market d'you think this book's aimed at?"
someone asked contributor Brian Stableford.
"Remainder," he said instantly.

interzone January 1995

55

Books Reviewed and Received

Under Pressure

Paul J. McAuley

M aureen F. McHugh's first novel, China
Mountain Zhang, won both the James
Tiptree, Jr. Memorial Award and the
Lambda Literary Award for its sharp and
sensitive portrait of its eponymous gay
centra! character's struggle for self-definition
in a world dominated by an authoritarian
Chinese culture. Perhaps not since William
Gibson's Neuromancer was so much attention
paid to a first novel (or at least in the U.S. -
China Mountain Zhang has not been
published in Britain). While it did not
introduce a new sf trope on a par with
cyberspace, it was remarkable for its clean
fusion of mainstream concern
with character-driven plot and its
portrayal of a detailed, lived-in
future society. It was as if a time
machine had delivered a samizdat
novel from that future to ours.

Like China Mountain Zhang,

McHugh's second novel, Half the
Day is Night (Tor, $21.95), is
concerned with the way that the
political Zeitgeist shapes the way we
live. It is set in the undersea nation of
Caribe, a third-world pressure-domed
environment, roughly equivalent to a
fusion of Haiti and Columbia, with
offshore banking and crammed slums,
one half ruled by the army, the other by
the Tonton Macoutes. Like that of China
Mountain Zhang, it is a future which its
characters inhabit so thoroughly that its
strangeness is buried deep and revealed
only obliquely.

French war veteran David Dai finds he
has made a mistake in becoming the
personal bodyguard of banker Mayla Ling,
whose old money family lost most of their
power when the government was deposed by
the army. After Mayla's home is bombed by
terrorists, David resigns and loses himself in
the anonymity of the slums and brutalizing
work in underwater construction - yet he is
the only person to whom Mayla can turn after
she is doublecrossed in a complex and
important deal. Like China Mountain Zhang,
both Mayla Ling and David Dai are alienated
and isolated; they are under both
psychological and physiological pressure.
David Dai, who has an unlikely acute sense of
empathy for an ex-soldier turned bodyguard
(he adopts a kitten and refuses to respond to
male competitiveness), can’t read the social
cues of the underwater city, while Mayla Ling
fails to understand him. The novel turns on
their mutual comprehension of the currents
which they must learn to navigate in order to
survive, and of each other.

Half the Day is Night has the
straightforward plot of a political thriller, but
its bleak irony and the spare particularity of
its prose bear comparison (and 1 do not

evoke the comparison lightly) with the novels
of Graham Greene. McHugh's abiding
concern is the way in which received notions
can control lives unless questioned: as in all
the best sf, at its centre is the riddle of what
shapes the world. David Dai appears to be
the weaker of the two main characters, but
his strength is that he wants to understand
that which makes him weak. It is a lesson in
how to see, and the surprisingly clumsy
metaphor that alerts us to this in the
opening scene is the
only

flaw in
this assured, chill but
ultimately redemptive novel.

Eric Brown's second novel, Engineman
(Pan, £4.99) is a romantic throwback in more
ways then one. Although it is set in the same
nada-continuum future history as his early
short stories, it does not share their headlong
nervy rush and the crammed exotica of their
cyberpunkish scenarios. Instead, Engineman
is an elegiac work informed by a sense of loss
and regret. Engineman-guided nada-
continuum starships have been superceded
by interfaces which warp space so that
people can step through them from world to
world. Ralph Mirren is an ex-Engineman who
is given the chance to help pilot an old-

fashioned and illegal starship to an
undisclosed destination. Ella Hunter, an
artist who has rebelled against her father's
politics, finds herself back on the colony
world where she was born, in the middle of a
insurrection against the sinister Keilor-
Vinicoff Organization, which, through its
ownership of the interfaces, is slowly
supplanting the democratic governments of
the colony worlds it is supposed to be
serving. Mixed into this are Ralph's time-
lapsed brother Bobby, who, after an accident
in the nada-continuum, sees and hears
everything with a delay of twenty-four hours,
an ancient alien race possessed of knowledge
of the secret history of the Universe, and a
mission to prevent humanity from destroying
its own future.

This is retro-sf on a grand scale, with
double-dyed villains, thrilling interstellar
journeys, hidden alien temples and mystic
revelations about the role of intelligence in
the evolution of the cosmos. Quite lacking
in any of the tropes which inform the corpus
of sf in the 90s, Engineman is a loving
homage to a lost and more innocent era of
sf, rich with echoes of the early fictions of
Michael Coney and Bob Shaw - and in
particular, the latter's Palace of Eternity.
Even the characters are gripped by the
past - Ralph Mirren mourns the lost
grandeur of the nada-continuum
starships; Ella Hunter mourns her lost
childhood, when she innocently
disported with aliens.

The writing sometimes resorts to
corny melodrama to keep things
moving, and the final revelation,
while grand, is hardly novel - but
given Brown's deliberate recherche
stance it could hardly be anything
else. Engineman is not innovative,
but that's the point, and it is
crammed with gorgeous images -
Paris overgrown with an alien
jungle; a spaceship inside a
Gothic cathedral - that resonate with the
thrill of ur-sf. If someone tells you that they
don't write them like that any more, make
them read this. Eric Brown does.

Kathleen Ann Goonan's Queen City Jazz
(Tor, $23.95) is a rich and vigorous, although
at times overblown, first novel that deals
unflinchingly with the consequences of fully
functional nanotechnology. After a utopian
period in which cities were enlivened and
reshaped by myriads of coordinated
microscopic machines, nanotech plagues and
information wars have decimated the world's
population. In addition, flux from a quasar
has ended most broadcast transmissions,
isolating remaining pockets of civilization. A
young woman, Verity, is one of a small

interzone January 1995 —

Books Reviewed and Received

community of Shakers who rigorously avoid
and exclude contact with nanotech, but when
her friend and her dog are killed she sets off
for the Queen City, enlivened Cincinnati,
where there is the possibility of restoring
them to life.

Once she manages to enter the city with
the help of a young musician, Verity finds
that it is run by a hive mentality composed of
giant genetically engineered Bees and
Flowers which have trapped the population in
endless recursive cycles of historical
reenactment. Verity learns that she is one of
a series of clones designed to break this
cycle. She is able to enter and alter the city's
information network, which is mediated
through propagation of complex pheromones
by the Flowers and Bees, but she is opposed
by the city's mad creator, who has hunted
down and destroyed previous versions of
Verity,

Verity's adventures in enlivened
Cincinnati, amongst a population traduced
into role-playing writers, artists, jazz
musicians and cartoon characters, may be
rambling, overlong and unfocused; and the
effect of the quasar on radio communications
is an unconvincing excuse for the need for
pheromone-mediated networks (aside from
the handwaving physics, even today most
information is cabled and would not be
affected). Yet in Queen City jazz Goonan
displays a startlingly original and energetic
imagination, and refurbishes, with a dense
and rich vision of nanotechnology out of
control and a city that has transformed itself
into a work of art, the classic sf plot of a hero
discovering her secret identity and affirming
it by renewing the world. It is a promising
debut.

Gene Wolfe's new tetralogy, The Book of the
Long Sun, is set on a vast multigeneration
starship, the Whorl, whose designers have
become Gods in the computer Mainframe,
ruling with capricious whim human and robot
inhabitants who have forgotten the nature of
their world. In only a few days, Silk, an
obscure priest blessed (or cursed) with an
epiphany from the mysterious Outsider
(identified not in the main text but in the
index as perhaps - typically, Wolfe's
qualification is craftily evasive - being Ah
Lah, a forgotten god), has become leader of a
popular uprising against the shadowy and
despised Ayuntamiento who have ruled the
city ofViron.

In the third volume, Calde of the Long
Sun (Tor, $22.95), the uprising breaks out
into civil war and the gods of the Mainframe
contest to influence its outcome. While Silk
tries to resolve the conflicting interests and
schemes of gods and political factions, Auk, a
thief who has aided Silk, must find his way
back to the city through the underground
mazes to deliver a message from the goddess
who is patron of Viron, and Maytera Mint, a
priestess from Silk's temple becomes General
of the insurgents.

This third book is dense with clues and
hints pointing towards answers of riddles
posed in the earlier volumes. The parentage
and fate of Blood, the drug dealer whose
purchase of the freehold of Silk's temple

- interzone January 1995

precipitated events, are resolved, and the
identity of Silk's own father is now made
clear. Much else, especially the destination
of the Whorl, remains to be resolved.

Unlike the adventures of Severian in The
Book of the New Sun, those of Silk in The Book
of the Long Sun are more circumscribed. By
the third volume, Silk has gained power not
over the world but only over a single city -
and the world of the Whorl is neither as
ancient nor as vast as that of the Urth. And
despite all his wounds, Silk is a lesser Fisher
King than Severian, and he is further
diminished by becoming only one of several
viewpoint characters. Yet Wolfe's masterful
sleight-of-hand plotting makes all this matter
perhaps less than it should. The revelations
he allows us to grasp here are only
foreshadowings of the final revelations
hinted at in the title of the last book, Exodus
from the Long Sun. Once that is to hand,
perhaps we can begin again to try and
understand the nature and meaning of Silk's
epiphany.

Also noted:

The Mad Man (Masquerade Books, $23.95),
Samuel R. Delany asserts in a disclaimer, is
most certainly not autobiographical. Yet this
novel, aimed at the gay fiction market,
contains echoes (perhaps mischievously
playful) of Delany's early career as an sf writer
in the descriptions of the pulp sf stories of
Timothy Hasler, a brilliant philosopher who
was murdered in mysterious circumstances.
While attempting to unravel Hasler's career,
John Marr engages in a mix of
polymorphously perverse homosexual
encounters with mostly homeless men that
eventually leads to an understanding, if not
an explanation, of Hasler's murder. The sex
is graphic and Augean, ending in an orgy that
matches anything out of de Sade, and which,
pace the famous ruling of Judge John Woolsey
overturning the American ban on lames
Joyce's Ulysses, is more emetic than
aphrodisiac. It is also one of the fiercest and
most fluid of Delany's recent fictions, riding
on his compassion and rage at the plight of
his fellow gays in this age of AIDS.

Mars Plus (Baen Books, $20) is a
collaborative sequel by Frederik Pohl and
Thomas T. Thomas to Pohl's Nebula Award
winning novel. It is set forty years after Roger
Torraway was unwillingly cyborged to enable
him to explore Mars without needing external
life support systems. But now Torraway's
power supply is running out, other cyborgs
roam Mars's surface and unmodified human
colonists struggle to make ends meet, and
the artificial intelligences in Earth's computer
network, who manipulated the Mars project
to ensure their own survival, have their own
plans for the future of humanity. The
scenario, particularly the economic burden
endured by the colonists, is pure Pohl, but
Thomas spins it into an adroit, fast-paced
and complex thriller which tangles and
cleverly resolves the fates of both humanity
and machine intelligence. As sharecrop
collaborations go, this yields more nutrition
than most.

Paul McAuley

Incorporating

Magic

Brian Stableford

C ontemporary fantasy is a difficult medium
in which to work because the problems
involved in placing magical events in a world
which is so comprehensively known can
become acute. One can, of course, slip into a
story-telling mode which is self-consciously
artificial, but that strategy risks losing the
best advantages of narrative realism, which
lend a precious sense of urgency and
immediacy to the narrative flow. Rebecca
Ore’s Slow Funeral (Tor, $21.95) copes far
better than most, ingeniously linking its
magic to a particular geographical location
and rooting it in the unique geology of the
region. The power thus made available
sustains a community of witches but also
lends a measure of opportunity to the
fundamentalist Christians who p'ppose them.

The heroine of the story is a young woman
who fled her uncomfortable heritage in
adolescence but now must return in order
tofulfil an obligation, thus being required to
confront and come to terms with the choices
which lie before her. Because the world aswe
know it is only slightly modified, in closely-
specified terms, the story retains almost all
j the authority of conventional narrative
realism while dealing with intriguingly arcane
matters. The novel is both tense and
convincing; its one fault - arguably - is that it
takes realism one step too far in featuring a
central character who does nothing but dither
until circumstance finally forces her hand.

Poppy Z. Brite's Drawing Blood (Penguin,
£5.99) has the advantage of dealing with
matters on the very edge of reality, where
supernatural invasions become so intimately
bound up with madness and hallucination
that a sceptical reader would be able to
contend that nothing authentically fantastic
happened at all. Indeed, the supernatural
materials here - which include a haunted
house and a private dream-universe built out
of the products of an artist's imagination -
are likely to be so familiar to habitual readers
of modern horror fiction that they will jar his
! or her sensibilities far less than the mundane
component of the plot, which describes the
evolution of a homosexual love-affair in
painstakingly graphic detail. So concerned is
Ms Brite to do this job conscientiously, in
fact, that the part of the story which deals
with one partner's horrific past and still-
troubled present is pushed very firmly into
the back seat, where it is quite impotent to
drive the plot. The result is that the storyline
wanders uneasily through a morass of
procrastinations, and its belated deliverance'
rings rather false.

As a chronicle of teenage angst Drawing
Blood is rather more coherent than its
predecessor, Lost Souls, but far less
compelling; it sacrifices the earlier novel's
louche ambiguity without discovering a
compensating intensity. It is not clear why

57

Books Reviewed and Received

Penguin have elected to package Brite's book
as literary fiction rather than genre fiction,
but they may be right in assuming that a
more appreciative audience for her work will
be found among lovers of gay fiction than in
the ranks of horror fans.

It is, of course, far easier to fit magic into
an imaginary past than an imaginary present,
as Gael Baudino does in the series of novels
begun with Strands of Starlight and
continued in Maze of Moonlight and
Shroud of Shadow (all Orbit, £4.99),
According to a biographical blurb Ms
Baudino has been a "minister of Dianic
Wicca," which places her firmly in the prolific
tradition of lifestyle fantasy which takes its
inspiration from Margaret Murray's classic
scholarly fantasy The Witch-Cult in Western
Europe (which claimed - falsely - that the
"witches" persecuted by the Church were
practitioners of a clandestine pagan religion).
Baudinos fiction deploys Murray's later
thesis that European folklore regarding
fairies, elves, the Sidhe and so on relates to
an actual other race which only recently
became extinct; not unnaturally, though,
Baudino substitutes tall and charismatic
Tolkienian elves for the diminutive and rather
ignoble characters which figure in the actual
folklore.

As with the great majority of evasive
literary Satanists, Baudino recruits her '
villains from the ranks of the aristocracy and

the Church, but she tends to be diplomatic in
the latter instance and her revenge fantasies
are curiously lacking in any real sense of
outrage about the exploits of the Inquisition,
except when torture is compounded by rape.
The trilogy develops a slightly better sense of
time and place as it proceeds but wisely
refuses to risk any substantial collision with
actual history, although the third volume
develops a quasi-Millenarian preoccupation
with the notion that the vanishing elves will
one day make a big comeback. Those who
believe that credulity is the bane and blight
of successful fantasy will find little in these
books to encourage a change of mind.

It is, of course, even easier to incorporate
magic into futuristic scenarios than the
pseudo-historical past. All you have todo is
assume that there was once a race of elves -
sorry, I mean aliens - who mysteriously
disappeared but left behind all kinds of
wondrous machinery for humans to find in
convenient locations like the backsides of
wardrobes or, in the case of John E. Stith's
Reunion on Neverend (Tor, $21.5), the
backside of a display-case in a museum. It is,

I suppose, not inappropriate that; such
randomly-accessible gifts should be made to
fall into the hands of complete morons. In
this particular display-case the buffoons who
find a system of dimensional doorways which
render the tedious and expensive business of

The Meat of the

Chris Gilmore

Sturgeon's Revelation holds that "90 percent
of everything is crud." I rarely dismiss
anythingas unadulterated crud in print (you
should see some of the stuff I don't notice at
all [except that you shouldn't - that's why I
don't notice it]), but there are times when I
wonder if over 90% of the rest isn't
thoroughly mediocre; mediocre to quite a
high level, granted - but mediocre by design.
This is not an original observation, and the
usual explanation is that, among the ever-
diminishing'band of large commercial
publishers, the marketing men hold the whip
hand over the editorial staff. Having noted
what sold well last year, they chantf'Give me
another one, just like the other one- only
stronger!” What they get is last year's flavour
with water, but by then they’re too drunk to
notice. *'

All too often one must turn for originality
to the slipstream, the small presses, the self-
pubTishers "ahd 'bVen (God help us!) the vanity
presses. I've not enquired where Osric Allen's
The Dark Tunnel (Robert Temple, £12.50)
fits into this continuum, but it's surely
different. For a start it obviously hasn't been
edited at all, which is not so bad a thing -
editors are like doctors, a weak one is a lot
worse than none at all - allowing the author's
- sr

more interesting peculiarities to shine forth
among the misused capitals and
idiosyncratic punctuation.

Allen has invited the reader to share the
role of editor with him, an idea which has its
roots in the eighteenth century, when
Fielding, addressing the reader in Tom Jones,
coined the immortal phrase "some little
reptile of a critic." But Allen's approach is
new to me; he has an imaginary reader offer
occasional boldface enquiries as to what is
going on, why character A has done B,’ or how
the other thing could have come about, and
requests that this or that description be
expanded. The answers given are not always
satisfactory, but the effect is oddly endearing.
It’s a bit as if one could argue with those
adventure-style role-play books from Puffin.

To accommodate this the narrative is
written in the historic present, and as often
happens with experimental writing, it's weak: .
there's a bungled insurrection, some
characters get killed, and the story peters out.

And the meat of the story?

Well, there’s this king of a somewhat
dilapidated kingdom. Technology is more
than usually haywire - the police carry
swords and spears, a girl unzips her skirt -
and the politics behind the insurrection are

space-travel irrelevant naturally decide that
the best possible use to which they can put it
is to use it to hijack a religious object of
purely sentimental value which they think
they just might be able to fence to an
eccentric double-dealer who will almost
certainly try to kill them; luckily the
omnicompetent hero is on hand to bedevil
them with all manner of petty practical jokes,
so that we can chuckle at the farcical manner
in which their masterplan goes awry.

According to the blurb, Reunion on
Neverend is a "fast-paced hard sf novel” by a
man of whom someone writing in SF
Chronicle said "John Stith writes the kind of
story that brought me to sf." In fact, it is a
tissue of such patent imbecilities that I
cannotimagine how it got into print, and it is
the kind of sf which makes it entirely
understandable that the vast majority of
modern readers find stories about witches,
haunted houses and elves infinitely more
plausible and far more rewarding. Good
fantasy, as ingenious elf-renovator j. R. R.
Tolkien explained in a classic essay, does not
insult reason; science fiction ought not to
insult reason either, and "hard science
fiction" ought by definition to be that science
fiction which works very hard to avoid
insulting reason. John Stith, alas, doesn't
even work as hard in this cause as Gael
Baudino, let alone Rebecca Ore.

Brian Stableford

Story

anyone's guess. The king has three sons and
a daughter, of whom the eldest (Julian) wants
to kill him, to which end he is engaged in a
mysterious and sordid intrigue.

The second son, Mark, is an even dodgier
character, who wishes to kill not only his
father but Julian and his younger brother Leo
as well. The daughter, Jennifer, is finding her
virginity a bit cumbersome, and maybe loses
it (or maybe doesn't) to a young man she
meets in the park.

The pace is slow, and heavy on descriptive
passages, including some strained
neologisms: "tingeing” for tinting appears
early, and somewhat later the horrid back-
formation "ostent," meaning outward
appearance. Leo engages in some jejune
philosophizing on the question, "Can
morality have a valid foundation in the ,
absence of theism?” (he reaches no
conclusion, but flirts with solipsism - if you
can't do better than that, Gentle Reader,
you're off the course) while julian lets the
question of identity go to his head. Having
formed a relationship with a prostitute, he
wishes he could be certain she loved him for
himself alone; having concluded that (given
the history of the relationship) he can never
be certain, he has her raped and tortured,
interzone January 1995 —

Books Reviewed and Received

thereby making sure she never will.

Yet I found myself warming to the author.
Despite his frequent clumsiness and
occasional vulgarity, there's a definite
impression of someone who loves the
language and is using it as well as he can to
make something for which he genuinely
cares. He also has a strong visual
imagination, which he applies inter alia to the
description of an ingenious automatic, self-
regulating torture-machine which would do
credit to lain Banks.

This is a distinct oddity, not quite genre
and certainly not altogether successful; but
it's a first novel, and I hope for moreand
better from the same source. Now, which of
you fat cats is going to take a mild flutter on
the softback rights?

It's a paradox of genre writing that a book
can be described both as bog-standard
and very well done, something which is
never true of mainstream or experimental
writing. Such was my initial reflection on
reading about half of Allan Cole and
Chris Bunch's The Far Kingdoms
(Legend, £5.99). It's very much the
usual sort of set-up - Orissa, a city-
state near the sea, with late-medieval
technology

and magic that works. There our
first-person hero, the red-haired, hot-
blooded Amalric Antero, makes a
fool of himself over an expensive
and dishonest prostitute, and finds
that a period of absence would not
only be diplomatic, but would
help to restore himself in his own
eyes no less than those of his
aged father and good-sort
lesbian sister. What better than
to (all together now!) Go on a
Quest?

For a quest you need a
companion or two, and it’s
Antero's good fortune to fall
in with lanos Greycloak, top
professional soldier, with a
long and bloody past, a
smattering of illegal magic
and a compulsion to go on
a quest of his own, which
might just lie in the same
direction - to seek the Far
Kingdoms of the title, no
less, somewhere to the
mysterious east. In between lie hostile
primitives, hostile sophisticates, harsh
deserts wanton women, treacherous allies,
inclement weather and all the ingredients of
a rattling good yarn in the style of Fritz
Leiber.

This is all very agreeable, with the usual
virtues and vices. The writing is often vivid,
the grammar is only occasionally uncertain
(whom instead of who, misuse of the
conditional), the construction is of necessity
episodic, with rather a lot of deus ex machina
in the later development, but not disjointed.
While the likeable Amalric is the only
character of any depth, this is not billed as a
work of deep psychological import, and
achieves what at first appear to be very
limited ambitions.

ancient hereditary enemy, and having taken
the last citadel (with great verve and at great
cost) are despatched in pursuit of the
surviving Archon, a great and evil wizard, who
has fled across uncharted seas but may well
come back to wreak vengeance if not hunted
down and killed.

This is the signal for another long, episodic
fantasy with plenty of bloodshed, treachery,
capture, escape, conjuration, sea-battles and
night-time forays against defended positions.
It works less well for three reasons.

The first is that Rali, being a woman and
therefore only semi-literate (she can read but
not write), must impart her story to a "scribe,"
whom she occasionally teases or berates for
no obvious reason, and who, possibly in
revenge, preserves all the contractions of her
speech. The narrative therefore bristles with
that'd, it'd, would've and all the other tedious
demoticisms that are only acceptable in the
direct speech of low characters. I presume the
rationale is that the whole book is a serial

monologue, but the effect grates on
the eye and the ear. Moreover,
to achieve contrast the really
low characters have to use a
dialect consisting mainly of
apostrophes, which is more
wearing still and makes them
harder to take seriously.

The second is Rali's
lesbianism. Very few writers can
tackle this subject, especially in the
first person, without descending
into pornography, preciosity or
both. For most of the book Cole and
Bunch dodge the issue on the
reasonable grounds that Rali has
quarrelled with her last lover and is
too busy fighting to seek another. All
right, but to fill the void they insert
occasional diatribes against the
unfairness of life in Orissa, one of those
societies where a woman has to be twice
as good to get half as much recognition.
This sort of issue has no relevance in
fantasy, since there can be nothing more
futile than to rail at the shortcomings of a
society which is archaic by definition:
overthrow tyrannies, fine; despatch evil
magicians, great; but if you want to
campaign against stereotyping in education,
glass ceilings in industry and lack of creche
facilities in the workplace, S&S is not the
medium.

Eventually Cole and Bunch realize that this
is less than adequate, and try to give the
lesbianism some sort of role. One of Rali's
lieutenants is visited by an evil dream in
which a man with an erect penis appears to
her and she (horror of horrors!) is attracted.
The poor little lieutenant in an elite fighting
force wakes in panic, and is sick. Diddums!
Cole and Bunch should stick to non-sexual
male bonding, which they did effectively in
the first book. When Rali meets the beautiful
and exotic princess Xia, and it’s love at first
sight, they try their hands at some sex-
writing, but the description of what goes on
is repetitive, dreary and could have been
plucked whole from the letters column of any
top-shelf glossy. Not again! 1 moaned, as four
nipples went hard with desire, yet again, but

But as the book progresses the tone
gradually darkens. lanos is a good friend and
has saved Antero's life on several
occasions, but he is a man driven by an
obsession, which gradually saps his morals
and his sanity pari passu. There are hints of
this from about mid way, but they are put on
hold while the pair do battle with the corrupt
and venal theocracy which rules Orissa (has
there ever been a benign theocracy, in S&S or
anywhere else?) coming to a head when, after
vast tribulation, hair's-breadth escapes etc.
they make it to lrayas, capital of the Far
Kingdoms. There they find a polity very
similar to Ursula Le Guin's Ornelas and ruled
by King Domas, who seems to be auditioning
for the part of Old King Cole. All cannot be
well in such a place, nor is it, though the grim
secret is in no way allegorical.

Having got there, it's necessary to get back
again and meet the welcome of
the theocrats, but

the

pair have demons of
their ownto lay first. It makes for a
sombre ending to a tale with more
complexity than depth, but the authors keep
the themes of friendship, justice and
responsibility in focus so that it works well
enough for those who like S&S.

Their new book, The Warrior's Tale
(Legend, £15.99; Del Rey, $20) is another
first-person story, set a few years later. This
time the narrator is Rali, Amalric's lesbian
sister, by now risen to command of the
Maranonian Guard, a female elite corps
roughly equivalent to the Sacred Band of
Thebes. She and her warriors are at the
forefront of a war against Lycanth, Orissa's

— interzone January 1995

59

Books Reviewed and Received

there was no mercy.

My third grouch is at a general air of haste
in the construction. Near the beginning the
Archon invades one of Rali’s dreams and
wounds her sufficiently to draw blood on her
waking body. As sympathetic and contagious
magic have a large role, 1 waited for the
sequel to this episode, but in vain. Everyone,
including the authors, seemed to forget
about it. In the same spirit, Rali visits two
islands called Tristan and Isolde. I searched
in vain for any resonance with that classic,
heterosexual love story, and had to write the
names off as a foolish whim.

As with The Far Kingdoms , the book ends
on a rather downbeat note, and with a strong
hint that the Antero family will be back
on their travels in due course. I wish
them good fortune, and a less cluttered 1
tale.

If you want to enter the fantasy market,

I’m far from sure that Simple Prayers is
the best possible title, especially for a
first novel. Be that as it may, Michael
Golding has chosen it for his, from Black
Swan at £5.99.

It's one of those semi-serious romps
about steamy goings-on among
improbable peasants, awash with
superstition and sex, that Marcel Ayme did
better than anyone. The time is early in the
14th century, the setting Riva di Pignoli, a
small island in the lagoon of Venice where,
inexplicably, spring has failed to come. What
sacrifices/ ceremonies will the chthonic gods
demand of the island's nominally (and in
some cases piously) Catholic inhabitants?

These are without exception physically
grotesque, mentally aberrant or both, none
less so than the principal viewpoint,
Albertino, who by choice lives alone with his
collection of expensive ornamental boxes (all
empty) in a roofless ruin on a cemetery islet,
and is for Ermenegilda, the evil-tempered,
overweight youngest daughter of the only rich
man on the island, the only possible object
of lust. Will their coupling restore fertility to
the vegetation? What else may it unleash?
What is the significance of the
drownedcorpse discovered by Piero, the
spoiled monk, and hugger-mugger buried by
him in a bank of wild thyme?

These questions and many others get
answered (more or less, and rather less than
more) as the narrative unwinds. It's a
strong, simple tale of mis-matched loves and
ill-omened lusts, which should sound a chord
in even the chastest and handsomest reader,
for all that Simple Prayers has all the
hallmarks of genre magic realism. Some
characters possess interesting occult powers,
most noticeably Piarina, who can prescribe
an infallible herbal remedy for any physical
ill, and Miriam, who can offer an infallible
and practicable Heath-Robinson solution to
any engineering problem. These are small
enough beer by MR standards (compare
especially the sort of capers cut in Ian
McDonald's Desolation Road), but the
authentic disregard for causal relationships
and the underlying assumption that emotional
states not only define the universe but provide
the template wherefrom it perpetually recasts

itself, place it firmly in the tradition.

Nonetheless, this book has far stronger
structure than most MR. As the narrative
progresses, and plague comes to the island,
it resolves itself into an allegory of sacred
and profane love, working out their tensions
against each other in the presence of
mortality in its most conspicuous guise. The
earthy lust of Gianluca, the local libertine, is
spiritualised - perhaps insufficiently - by love
for Miriam, while Piero's spiritual longing for
her is forced to confront its earthy
component. Both love her, and seek in their
different ways to do her honour, yet Miriam is
already pregnant by a third (undisclosed)
party. Piero

THE

chooses

Miriam and her baby (Nicolo) to model a
Madonna & Child; and when the plague
strikes, only Piero and Nicolo are spared.

Alright, it's an unsubtle book; MR is an
unsubtle genre. But Golding uses it as 1 think
it's best used: to present the strong, stark
passions of ignorant people in a world made
comprehensible only by faith. The only
trouble is, to whom are they being
presented? MR is still fairly new, and the act
of reading it is a statement about the reader
- specifically, that he is not a romantic
peasant or slum-dweller, buoyed-up by direct
if illusory experience of the eternal, but a
literary gent (or lady). Someday it may
become the food of the masses, as Sword-&-
Sorcery has, but not yet, and on the evidence
of this book, not soon.

Whether it's desirable that MR should
become a genre form is one of those deep
questions that I don't feel like answering
today; it has, and this book proves it. To be
frank, I'm more interested in what happens
when genres mingle. What price the marriage
of MR and S&S? Something like The Worm

Ourobouros re-written in the style of R. A.
Lafferty, I imagine - and wouldn't that be a
thing!

Such marriages sometimes occur, and can
even do so retrospectively, as has happened
in The Relic by Ega de Quieroz, first
published in 1887, now brought out by
Dedalus in an excellent translation by
Margaret lull Costa at £8.99. In the past I've
had occasion to chide Dedalus for offering
short weight or inconsistent quality, but this
is excellent value for money. The avowedly
picaresque story concerns the adventures of
Teodorico Rapaso, an amoral young man of
hedonistic temperament, who finds himself
utterly dependent on the bounty of his aunt,
an embittered old maid afflicted with
religious mania whose principal ambition (it
seems to Teodorico) is to convert him into a
replica of herself.

He therefore finds himself feigning a life of
unnatural piety while conducting an affair
with a light woman, as if Cugel the Clever
were forced to live the life of Tartuffe.
Unsurprisingly his girlfriend drops him for a
less encumbered lover; even worse,

Teodorico finds the bogus religiosity
becoming slightly less bogus by sheer force
of repetition - he catches himself actually
praying to Our Lady of Grace and Favour,
though not for such favours as would
appeal to his aunt. Altogether, Teodorico is
more than willing to go on pilgrimage to
the Holy Land, charged to return with a
holy relic which his aunt can devote her
declining years to mooning over.

On the way Teodorico conducts the
odd amour and gets rooked as naively
randy tourists have always been rooked,
while observing the manifestations of
religious bigotry and rapacity in the
manner of Mark Twain. All good, clean
fun, but where was the fantasy? Then,
with the book nearly half done, he and
, his German travelling companion
Topsius find themselves in the Judaea
of Tiberius, on the day of Jesus's arrest.
How? Topsius seems to know, and to have
engineered it, but he's too intent on checking
the history to enlighten Teodorico, who in
any case never asks. 1 sat back for some
blasphemous banter, but the mood of the
book changed. The description
of the hearing before Pilate is highly
coloured, highly atmospheric and smells
rather of the lamp (I only spotted one
anachronism, but suspect an expert would
see more) and played dead straight. It's the
book's high point, and worth setting beside
the equivalent passages from Bulgakov's The
Master and Margarita.

Thereafter Teodorico returns with his
collection of relics, and there's a farcical
secondary climax, amusing but heavily
telegraphed, followed by an unmystical
vision, in which he confronts his own nature.
This struck me as the most original aspect of
the book, which is surely unfair: the same
sort of thing has been done better by lack
Vance, but Vance came later. Even so, almost
everything is done well, and how often do I
write that.

Chris Gilmore

interzone January 1995 —

Books Reviewed and Received

T he Third Alternative (£2.50 per issue, £9
for 4, quarterly, A5, 52pp) and Zene (£1.95
per issue, £7 for 4, Quarterly, A5, 36pp) edited
by Andy Cox, 5 Martins Lane, Witcham, Ely,
Cambs CB6 2LB

The stories in The Third Alternative issue
three are vivid, succinct and exciting,
surpassing much that has gone before and
fulfilling the promise of issue one. Reading
"The Vindictive Studio" by Albert Russo is like
watching an improbably successful cross
between Death in Venice and Roger Corman's
Poe films. Allen Ashley gleefully rewrites the
astronomy books in "7 Rides to Venus,"
bringing our sister planet more into line with
the Roman goddess of love; it's nostalgic,
humorous and quite erotic. D.F. Lewis is at
his best in "The Absence," a subtle,
imaginative examination of horror.

Of the remaining half-dozen stories, I'd
particularly recommend |ohn Gimblett's "A
Room at Mrs Rajalaxmi's," an account of an
incident in India which doesn't read like
fiction, and Roger Stone's elegiac "4 Miles to
the Hotel California," which should especially
appeal to Eagles fans (although this non-fan
didn't feel alienated). It's debatable whether
these qualify as sf (or if it even matters), but
few sf readers will have problems with these,
or any of the others in this selection.

I've never been excited by small-press
poetry before, but there's always a first time.
"Shellfish and Switchblades" by Raymond K.
Avery is so accessible and meaningful that
you wonder why readers put up with so much
that is neither. Gerald England's "Walking the
Wall" reads like the slow ticking of a
pendulum clock, and ends with the chilling
reminder that "even together you are alone."
Most powerful of all, perhaps, is Norman
lope's "Ultima Tundra," an imagery-laden
poem of love and the seasons.

While other small-press editors try so hard
to be different, Andy Cox is quietly producing
the goods. And just to show it's no big deal,
he's also editing Zene. Subtitled the small
press guide, it's informative, and as up to date
as a quarterly can be. If you're an
adventurous reader, it's very useful; if you're
an editor or aspiring author, then, if you're
taking your task at all seriously, you will
already have a copy.

Black Tears (£ 1 .75 per issue, £6.75 for 4,
quarterly, A5, 68pp) edited by A. Bradley, 28
Treaty St., Islington, London, N1 OSY.

Black Tears issue five is an improvement
on the previous one. For a start, it's got a
contribution from a Big Name Author in it
(Guy N. Smith). It's also got two good stories
in it - Dominic Dulley's stylish piece about a
doppelganger, and Paul Pinn's "The Cleanser
of the Land."

Most of the rest of the fiction fits the "I
can't believe 1 just read that" category.

There's something about items of furniture
telling each other to shut up, another AIDS-
revenge, and another - yet another - diner
that (yawn) turns out to be serving up
butchered women.

There's some pretty good artwork by Dallas
Goffin, and most of the non-fiction is not
bad. Film reviewer Steve West comes across
as a sensible chap, even if he does think ticks

Small

Press

Magazines

Paul Beardsley

are insects. The most unusual article in the
issue, however, is Melissa Gish's "Mad Marx
Beyond Thunderdome." As you would expect,
this is an attempt to analyse one of Mel
Gibson's films from the perspective of a
proponent of Karl's theories, and, as such, it's
quite amusing. However, I was left with the
uncomfortable suspicion that maybe it wasn 't
meant as a piss-take.

Territories (Cheques payable to Territories,
£2 per issue, £6 for 3, appearance irregular,
A4, 32pp) edited by Erich Zann, Gary M.
Gibson, c/o McNair, 65 Niddrie Road (0/2),
Strathbungo, Glasgow, Scotland G42 8PT.

Territories issue four is subtitled the sfand
slipstream journal. In this context, the
meaning of "slipstream" is refreshingly
unpretentious, something along the lines of
"non-SF things that are likely to interest SF
readers".

Paul McAuley is interviewed by Gary M.
Gibson. Dave Hyde reviews a considerable
amount of biographical material about Philip
K. Dick. Fergus Bannon attempts to revive
interest in an otherwise destined-for-
obscurity film, Koyaanisgatsi - and judging by
his description, it's well worth checking out.
lim Steel stretches the already broad local
definition of slipstream by charting the career
of sixties' rockwhacko Roky Erickson -
presumably there are sf readers out there
who are still impressed by "subtle” references
to drugs concealed in ostensibly innocent
lyrics. Ian McDonald uses a lot of words to
make some pleasing but obvious
observations about Remix culture. Ten books
are reviewed. Mike Cobley, in his regular slot,
attacks the novelization/spinoff anoraks and
the insidious (and quite real) damage they
are doing to the genre.

And, looking a little out of place, is a
longish piece of fiction, "The Sight of God" by
Phil Raines & Harvey Welles. I can only
describe it as unexciting.

As regards style, the contributors come
across as trying a little too hard to be
dangerous. For instance, Cobley's slot is
called "Shark Tactics," which on this occasion
is laughable, considering the target of his
tirade. Elsewhere, in the spoof advert "VR
Boy," Caspar Williams launches a satirical
attack on targets that just aren't worth
satirising. The presentation leaves a bit to be
desired, too, but these are largely cosmetic

points, and do not detract from the
magazine's content, which is considerable
and varied.

Scheherazade (£1 .99 per issue, £7.50 for 4,
quarterly, A5, 34pp) edited by Elizabeth
Counihan, St Ives, Maypole Road, East
Grinstead, West Sussex RH 19 1HL.

A young woman, unaware that she has
earned three wishes from a witch, wishes that
something exciting would happen. With
hilarious consequences. At least the author
(Deirdre Counihan, who happens to be the
editor's sister) appears to think so. Frankly, 1
thought the young woman should have
demanded a refund.

Scheherazade, The Magazine of Fantasy,
Science Fiction & Gothic Romance, is now 10
issues old, and, my opening remarks aside,
it's going strong. It's still got that Arabian
Nights feel, with a feminine slant that in no
way excludes male readers (or writers, for
that matter). Tim Concannon interviews Geoff
Ryman, who makes some thoughtful
comments about writing sf and how seriously
you should take it. Jane Gaskell's graphic
novel, "King's Daughter," is serialized in the
centre pages, though I defy anyone to pick up
the story at this late stage.

Of the six stories, five are good 'uns,
although I suspect 1 am in the minority in
that I was amused by David Redd's "A Journey
Along the Sprout Vector." "Hoodie's Wood"
by Sue Thomason should appeal to
Holdstock fans, and Chris Paul, drawing on
his location in the Gambia, provides the
memorable "Ghost of the Mind." Authors
Marise Morland and Sandra Unerman also
deserve a mention.

My main criticism of Scheherazade is its
thinness, still. But what the heck, it’s full of
good stories imbrued with a touch of the
fantastic, the romantic and the exotic. Like
Albedo One and The Third Alternative, it's very
much a reader’s magazine (as opposed to a
repository for the outpourings of never-to-be-
read would-be authors). Recommended for
fireside reading, especially when it's raining
outside.

By the time you read this... The 20th issue of
Alternities will have appeared. Despite a
recent price rise, it's still very inexpensive at
£ 1 .50 for 60pp, or £8 for 4 issues. Issue 20
features fiction by Rhys H. Hughes, Conrad
Williams and others, an interview with Grant
Naylor (the Red Dwarf creators), stuff about
the Aliens series of films, and loads more. If
you're a PC owner (286, VGA, DOS 3.3 mini-
mum requirements), you may be interested
in getting the electronic version, which is
longer, and has even more stuff about Aliens.
It's probably a first, and at only £1 .95 (inc
P&P) it's certainly worth a look. Cheques
payable to Mark Rose, 39 Balfour Court,
Station Road, Harpendon, Herts AL5 4XT.

Meanwhile I'll be putting together the second
issue of Substance, the first having appeared
in November. That's available for £2.50 per
issue, £9 for 4, from Neville Barnes, of 65
Conbar Avenue, Rustington, West Sussex
BN 16 3LZ. It's a shame I can't review it.

Paul Beardsley

interzone Januaiy 1995

61

Books Reviewed and Received

The

Hubbard

Bible

Mike Ashley

N ow that L. Ron Hubbard has become a
cult figure and his work has taken on
almost mythical proportions (with some), it
was inevitable that a full bibliography would
appear. Initially, I approached The Fiction of
L. Ron Hubbard by William J. Widder, MA
(Bridge Publications, $50) with some caution.
Hubbard had long maintained that during the
1930s he had sustained a prolific output of a
million words or more a year, yet in my own
research I had never obtained evidence for
this. I wondered whether this bibliography
would prove that claim true or whether, in
order to further embroider the Hubbard
myth, it would create a body of work that
might prove suspect. I was delighted to
discover that it did neither. This book, so far
as I can check, is a thorough work of
scholarship and establishes an output by
Hubbard that is both believable and
informative. At last there is a firm basis for
the evaluation of Hubbard's fiction.

In fact the bibliography is fascinating. Just
to emphasize the point, it does only cover
Hubbard's fiction, and not the enormity of his
non-fiction (apart from some non-Dianetic
magazine items), but that is probably all to
the good as it focuses the mind on the
significance of Hubbard's pulp career and of
his contribution to science fiction and
fantasy. In the 1 940s Hubbard’s work was
held in high regard, especially his
contributions to Unknown and Astounding,
and it only fell into disregard in the 50s and
60s with the increasing opposition to
Scientology. The problem with this was that
Hubbard was being ostracized and his fiction
ignored. Hence when Jack Adrian assembled
a volume of Hubbard's previously
unreprinted stories in the 1970s, no publisher
would go near it.

After an interesting but all too brief
preface which scarcely touches Hubbard's
life, the volume runs into a series of
chronologies listing the key dates in
Hubbard's life, and the publication sequence
of his fiction in genre order, before moving
into the main bibliographies. These follow
the accepted practice of listing books and
magazine stories in chronological order,
citing all appearances (including future
proposals) and providing a brief plot outline.
We thus discover that Hubbard’s first
published stories were in The University

Hatchet Monthly Literary Review starting with
"Tah" in 1932, and that his first professional
appearance was with "The Green God" in
Thrilling Adventures in February 1934. This
was a non-fantasy, but was typical of much
commercial adventure fiction of its day about
a naval intelligence officer searching for a
lost Chinese idol.

Once Hubbard began writing
professionally there is no doubt that his
output became impressive for a period, but
no more impressive than the real wordsmiths
of the day such as Frederick Faust, Lester
Dent, Arthur J. Burks, H. Bedford-Iones and
Norvell Page. Hubbard's output seems to
have averaged three or four stories a month
during 1934 to 1937, though this amounted
to over a hundred before "The Dangerous
Dimension" introduced him to science-fiction
readers in Astounding's July 1938 issue.
Hubbard's work covered all genres, though
mostly adventure and western, but we can
now identify at least one earlier fantasy, "The
Death Flyer" in Mystery Novels Magazine for
April 1 936 where a man boards a ghost train
and seeks to save the life of a girl who died in
its wreckage ten years earlier.

The bibliography also allows us to see
Hubbard's sf and fantasy in the context of his
other contemporary work. Although
publication order does not always follow the
sequence of composition, it is interesting to
see the extent to which fantasy began to
dominate Hubbard's writing in the 40s, not
just for Astounding and Unknown but in other
pulps. For Five Novels Monthly for instance he
wrote "If I Were You," about a circus midget
who switches bodies with a lion tamer, while
for Wild West Weekly he produced "Shadows
from Boothill" about a hired gunman who
suddenly acquires two sinister shadows. Both
of these just predate what I consider as
Hubbard's masterpiece, Fear, and seem to
suggest a conscious change in Hubbard's
writing from no-holds-barred adventure to a
more thoughtful and increasingly sinister
form of fantasy. Particularly interesting, in
light of the soon-to-appear science of
Dianetics, is a presumably humorous story,
"The Magic Quirt" in, of all places, The Rio Kid
Western Magazine for June 1948. Here a cook
is given a token which he believes has
magical properties, but it is only after he has
performed several heroic deeds that he

discovers it is nothing but a cheap trinket.
This demonstrated in simple form Hubbard's
credo that we are all capable of bettering
ourselves if we can master our own
inhibitions.

In addition to Hubbard's published
magazine fiction, which runs to 223 titles,
Widder identifies Hubbard's unpublished
works. This includes ten listed as sf or
fantasy, though there are a few other
fantasies dotted around under other genres.

In total there are 98 unpublished but
complete stories listed, plus another 71
fragments. Few of these are dated so it is
impossible to know how many of them are
from the 30s or 40s, but they begin to give
some credence (though not enough) to
Hubbard's claim as a prolific wordsmith since
most of these near-400 items would have
been produced between 1934 and 1949 (less
three war years) before Hubbard turned to
Dianetics.

There is also a listing of Hubbard's verse. I
found this surprising as I had not mentally
registered the extent of Hubbard's verse in
his Mission Earth sequence, but here it is all
identified. There appears to be only one
separately published piece of Hubbard verse,
from 1946, though there's a further cache of
unpublished stuff. In addition to the listing of
Hubbard's books and magazine fiction, which
is clearly the core of the bibliography, there
are details of audio tapes and recordings,
music albums, plays and screenplays, and the
inevitable back-patting of honours, awards
and critical appreciation. This last includes
some fascinating reproductions of columns
and features from the pulps.

The book is rounded out by a confirmation
of Hubbard's pen names, and other
miscellaneous pieces including an attractive
colour photograph portfolio of Hubbard's life
and works.

Only the format in which this book is
published (big and bold) betrays any bias
toward Hubbard. The rest is a matter-of-fact,
scholarly and highly readable presentation of
Hubbard's works and will, I have no doubt,
rapidly form the basis for the next chapter in
the rediscovery and reappraisal of Hubbard
the writer.

Mike Ashley
interzone January 1995 —

62

Books Reviewed and Received

Books Received

October 1994

The following is a list of all sf, fantasy and horror
titles, and books of related interest, received by
[nterzone during the month specified above.
Official publication dates, where known, are
given in italics at the end of each entry.
Descriptive phrases in quotes following titles are
taken from book covers rather than title pages. A
listing here does not preclude a separate review in
this issue (or in a future issue) of the magazine.

Anthony, Piers. Geis of the Gargoyle. Tor,
ISBN 0-312-85391-2, 320pp, hardcover,
$22.95. (Fantasy novel, first edition; proof
copy received; the latest in the "Xanth"
series.) February 1995.

Anthony, Piers. Harpy Thyme. New English
Library, ISBN 0-450-60438-1, 343pp, A-format
paperback, £4.99. (Fantasy novel, first
published in the USA, 1993; a "Xanth" novel.)
6th October 1 994.

Barbieri, Suzanne J. Clive Barker:

Mythmaker for the Millennium. Foreword by
Peter Atkins. Illustrated by Pete Queaily.
British Fantasy Society (2 Harwood St.,
Stockport SK4 1JI], ISBN 0-952-4153-0-5,

62pp, small-press paperback, cover by Les
Edwards, £4.99. (Critical study of the well-
known horror novelist, first edition; a nicely
produced booklet, but the text is all too
brief.) No date shown: received in October 1994.

Bear, Greg. Songs of Earth and Power. Tor,
ISBN 0-312-85669-5, 558pp, hardcover,
$24.95. (Fantasy omnibus, first published in
the UK, 1992; proof copy received; it contains
revised versions of Bear's two full-length
ventures into the fantasy mode, The Infinity
Concerto ( 1984] and The Serpent Mage 1 1986),
plus an afterword by the author; reviewed by
Chris Gilmore in Interzone 70.) January 1 995.

Bell, julie. The )ulie Bell Portfolio.

Introduction by Boris Vallejo. Dragon's
World/Paper Tiger, ISBN 1-85028-345-1, 64pp,
very large-format paperback, £12.95. (Fantasy
art portfolio, first edition; 28 colour plates,
beautifully produced; in commenting on the
same publisher's The Boris Vallejo Portfolio •
(March 1994] we said: "with its emphasis pn-
heavily sculptured near-naked bodies,
Vallejo's art verges on the pornographic, but
is undeniably well done of its sort"; exactly
the same applies here; julie Bell is Vallejo's
wife, a former bodybuilder and model.) 10th
November 1 994.

Bradfield, Scott. What's Wrong With America.

St Martin's Press, ISBN 0-312-11349-8, 196pp,
hardcover, $18.95. (Satirical horror novel, first
published in the UK, 1994; this appeared many
months ago from Picador, but of course we
weren't sent a review copy of that edition;
Bradfield is making a name for himself as a
literary novelist, and this is his second novel;
two of his best early stories, "Unmistakably

the Finest" and "Dream of the Wolf," first
appeared right here in Interzone .) 20th October
1994.

Cadogan, Mary. And Then Their Hearts
Stood Still: An Exuberant Look at
Romantic Fiction Past and Present.

Macmillan, ISBN 0-333-56486-3, 322pp,
hardcover, £16.99. (Critical study of romantic
novels, first edition; this appealing, lightly-
written critique is devoted to a genre which is
outside Interzone's normal sphere of interest,
but it's surprising how much borderline
fantasy/horror material creeps in: there are
mentions of the 18th-century Gothic
novelists, Marie Corelli's religiose fantasies,
lames Hilton's Lost Horizon, Mary Stewart's
"Merlin" books, Virginia Andrews's dark fairy
tales and so on and on -- an object lesson in

Boris Vallejo is one of the world's top fantasy artists. He has always been interested in body building, and is often
asked if there really . are people like the people he paints. His wife, Julie Bell (pictured below), is a body-builder and
has modelled for many of his paintings. She features in a collection of Vallejo's photographs, Bodies, forthcoming
from Dragon's World/Paper Tiger. She is also an artist in her own right, and The Julie Bell Portfolio, a collection
of her paintings, is listed on this page.

— interzone January 1995

63

Books Reviewed and Received

how popular genres interpenetrate; Mary
Cadogan was a regular contributor to the late
Million magazine, and her range of interest is
very wide; recommended.) 21st October 1994.

Chadbourn, Mark, Nocturne. Gollancz, ISBN
0-575-05793-9, 398pp, A-format paperback,
cover by Max Schindler, £5.99. (Horror novel,
first edition; there is a simultaneous
hardcover edition (not seen]; a second novel
by this "one-time Anti-Nazi League
campaigner and union activist.") / 7th
November 1994.

Cole, Allan, and Chris Bunch. The Warrior's
Tale. Del Rey, ISBN 0-345-38733-3, 439pp,
hardcover, cover by Keith Parkinson, $21 .
(Fantasy novel, first published in the UK,
1994; sequel to The Far Kingdoms ; although
the authors are American, it seems the UK
Legend edition, listed here some time ago,
precedes this US edition by a month.) 30th
November 1 994.

Conner, Mike. Archangel. Tor, ISBN 0-312-
85743-8, 350pp, hardcover, $21.95.
(Alternative-world sf novel, first edition; proof
copy received; here we go again with the
clashing titles; in Britain, Garry Kilworth has
just published a novel called Archangel...)
February 1995.

Coppel, Alfred. Glory's War: Book Two of
the Goldenwing Cycle. Tor, ISBN 0-312-
85471-4, 288pp, hardcover, $21. (Sf novel,
first edition; proof copy received.) April 1995.

Daniels, Les. The Don Sebastian Vampire
Chronicles. Raven, ISBN 1-85487-343-1,
232+222+ 199pp, A-format paperback, cover
by Les Edwards, £5.99. (Horror omnibus, first
edition; the three constituent novels, The
Black Castle, The Silver Skull and Citizen
Vampire, were first published in the USA in
1978, 1979 and 1981.) 10th October 1994.

Delany, Samuel R. They Fly at Ciron. Tor,
ISBN 0-312-85775-6, 222pp, hardcover,
$19.95. (Fantasy novel, first published in
1993; proof copy received; it was previously
issued by a small press, and is based on
material which appeared in various
magazines in the 1960s and 70s.) January
1995.

Feist, Raymond E. Shadow of a Dark Queen.

HarperCollins, ISBN 0-00-224612-0, 382pp, C-
format paperback, cover by Geoff Taylor,

£8,99. (Fantasy novel, first published in 1994;
first in the "Serpentwar Saga" sub-series of
"Riftwar" novels.) 7th November 1994.

Ferret, Tim. We Murder. Illustrated by the
author. Morrigan/The Dog Factory |84 Ivy
Ave., Southdown, Bath BA2 IAN], ISBN 1-
870338-06-5, 48pp, small-press paperback, no
price shown. (Horror (?) novelette, first
edition; limited to 200 numbered copies
signed by the author/artist.) No date shown:

- 64

received in October 1 994.

Furey, Maggie. Harp of Winds. "Book Two of
the Artefacts of Power." Legend, ISBN 0-09-
927101 -X, 405pp, A-format paperback, cover
by Mick Van Houten, £5.99. (Fantasy novel,
first edition.) 3rd November 1994.

Furey, Maggie. Harp of Winds.
Bantam/Spectra, ISBN 0-553-56526-5,
xx+442pp, A-format paperback, $6.50.
(Fantasy novel, first published in the UK,

1994; proof copy received; this one contains a
lengthy summary of the first volume, Aurian,
and an Index of Characters, which aren't in
the British edition.) February 1995.

Garnett, David, ed. New Worlds 4.
Gollancz/VGSF, ISBN 0-575-05147-7, 224pp,
B-format paperback, £6.99. (Sf anthology, first
edition; all-new stories by Barrington Bayley,
Matthew Dickens, Peter F. Hamilton, Robert
Holdstock, lan McDonald, Michael Moorcock,
Lisa Tuttle and others; plus a brilliant article
by David Langford; alas, Garnett announces
that this will be the last of the series from the
present publisher.) 17th November 1994.

Garnett, David. Stargonauts. Orbit, ISBN 1-
85723-186-4, 314pp, A-format paperback,
cover by Mike Posen, £4.99. (Humorous sf
novel, first edition; Garnett's return to sf
novel-writing after more than 20 years away.)
3rd November 1 994.

Grant, Charles. Jackals. Tor/Forge, ISBN 0-
3 1 2-85565-6, 255pp, hardcover, cover by )oe
Curcio, $20.95. (Horror/suspense novel, first
edition; after many years of authorship it
seems Mr Grant has dropped the "L" from his
name -- a bit like Dean Koontz dropping his
"R": middle initials must be uncool.) October
1994.

(Halifax, Lord, ed.] The Ghost Book of
Charles Lindley, Viscount Halifax. Foreword
by Simon Marsden. Carroll & Graf, ISBN 0-
7867-0 1 5 1 -X, xii+244+ 1 7 1 pp, B-format
paperback, cover by Marsden, $10.95. (Horror
anthology, originally published as two
volumes, Lord Halifax's Ghost Book, 1936, and
Further Stories from Lord Halifax's Ghost Book,
1937; this edition first published in the UK by
Robinson, 1994.) November 1994.

Hartwell, David G., and Kathryn Cramer, eds.
The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of
Hard SF. Introduction by Gregory Benford.
Orbit, ISBN 1-85723-271-2, 990pp, hardcover,
cover by )ohn Berkey, £25. (Sf anthology, first
published in the USA, 1994; a massive
volume of 66 stories, tending towards the
avowedly science-based kind of sf, with
reprinted work by Poul Anderson, Isaac
Asimov, I. G. Ballard, David Brin, Arthur C.
Clarke, Hal Clement, Philip K. Dick, Robert L.
Forward, William Gibson, Robert A. Heinlein,
Ursula Le Guin, Larry Niven, Frederik Pohl,
Bob Shaw, Clifford D. Simak, Theodore

Sturgeon, Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Gene
Wolfe and many others - not all of them
writers one would have thought represen-
tative of "hard sf"; reviewed by Brian Stable-
ford in Interzone 8 8.) 20th October 1994.

Holt, Tom. Odds and Gods. Orbit, ISBN 1-
85723-266-6, 282pp, hardcover, cover by
Steve Lee, £14.99. (Humorous fantasy novel,
first edition; proof copy received.) 1 9th
January 1994.

Janes, Phil. Fission Impossible. "Round Two
of The Galaxy Game." Millennium, ISBN 1-
85798-1446-84, 270pp, A-format paperback,
cover by Mick Posen, £4.99. (Humorous sf
novel, first published in 1993; reviewed by
Chris Gilmore in Interzone 84.) 10th November
1994.

Jones, Stephen, ed. The Mammoth Book of
Frankenstein. Robinson, ISBN 1-85487-330-
X, xiv+577pp, B-format paperback, cover by
Luis Rey, £5.99. (Horror anthology, first
edition; it contains the complete text of Mary
Shelley's Frankenstein plus new and reprint
stories by Robert Bloch, John Brunner, Ramsey
Campbell, David Case, Dennis Etchison, Paul
). McAuley, Graham Masterton, Kim Newman,
David J. Schow, Guy N. Smith, Michael
Marshall Smith, Karl Edward Wagner and
others.) 10th October 1994.

King, Stephen. Nightmares and
Dreamscapes. New English Library', ISBN 0-
450-61009-8, 836pp, A-format paperback,
£5.99. (Horror collection, first published in
the USA, 1993; reviewed by Pete Crowther in
Interzone 82.) 6th October 1994.

Lawhead, Stephen. The Endless Knot: Song
of Albion, Book Three. Lion, ISBN 0-7459-
2783-1, 422pp, paperback, £4.99. (Fantasy novel,
first published in 1993; reviewed by Wendy
Bradley in Interzone 68.) 28th October 1994.

Leech, Ben. The Bidden. Pan, ISBN 0-330-
33540-5, 314pp, A-format paperback, cover by
Fred Gambino, £4.99. (Horror novel, first
edition; "Ben Leech" is a pseudonym of
Stephen Bowkett, previously best known for
his juvenile thrillers.) 1 1th November 1994.

McCaffrey, Anne. The Chronicles of Pern:

First Fall. Bantam, ISBN 0-552-13913-0,
284pp, A-format paperback, cover by Steve
Weston, £4.99. (Sf collection, first published
in 1993.) 8th December 1994.

McHugh, Maureen F. China Mountain
Zhang. Orbit, ISBN 1-85723-270-4, 3 1 2pp (?(,
B-format paperback, £5.99. (Sf novel, first
published in the USA, 1992; the publishers
have sent us a copy of the American
paperback edition with a UK cover proof;
lames Tiptree Award winner; reviewed by Ken
Brown in Interzone 64; at last the much-
praised McHugh makes it to Britain, and
about time too.) 26th January 1995.

interzone January 1995 —

Books Reviewed and Received

Matheson, Richard. Now You See It... Tor,
ISBN 0-312-85713-6, 220pp, hardcover,

$19.95. (Horror novel, first edition; proof copy
received.) February 1995.

Modesitt, L. E., Jr. The Order War. Tor, ISBN
0-312-85569-9, 479pp, hardcover, $23.95.
(Fantasy novel, first edition; proof copy
received; the fourth book in the "Reduce"
series.) January 1995.

Nicolazzini, Piergiorgio, ed. I Mondi del
Possibile. Editrice Nord (Milan, Italy], ISBN
| 88-429-0740-5, xiv+595pp, hardcover, cover by
: Michael Whelan, price not shown. (Alternative-
world sf anthology, first edition; a bumper
collection of well-known English-language
"uchronian" stories translated into Italian;
contributors include Greg Bear, David Brin, L.
Sprague de Camp, Karen |oy Fowler, Nancy
Kress, lames Morrow, Kim Stanley Robinson,
Harry Turtledove and Howard Waldrop, among
others; Brian Stableford and Kim Newman
are acknowledged for their editorial advice;
there is what looks to be a learned introduction
I by the editor and a good secondary
bibliography of the subject.) Late entry: 1 993
! publication, received in October 1994.

Noon, leff. Vurt. Pan, ISBN 0-330-33881-1,
345pp, A-format paperback, cover by Stuart
Hunter, £4.99. (Sf/fantasy novel, first
published in 1993; winner of the 1994 Arthur
C. Clarke Award; what's happened to
Ringpull, the new publishing house which did
this book with such fanfare last year?; aren't
they supposed to have published other sf
titles by now, including a sequel to this book
I by Jeff Noon?; if they have released anything
more, they’ve neglected to send it to us for
review.) 21st October 1994.

Norman, Michael, and Beth Scott. Haunted
America. Tor, ISBN 0-3 1 2-8475 1 -9, 4 1 1 pp,
hardcover, $23.95. (Ghost-story collection,
first edition; it consists of "true," or at any
rate legendary, material retold; a big book
with a remarkably full bibliography, it should
be of interest to lovers of supernatural
Americana.) October 1994.

Pike, Christopher. The Listeners. New
English Library, ISBN 0-340-62571-6, 328pp,
A-format paperback, cover by Paul Davies,
£4.99. (Horror novel, first published in the
USA, 1994; "Christopher Pike" is a pseudonym
for an American author who keeps his real
name well hidden; this is his second adult
novel, though his many juveniles have been
worldwide bestsellers.) 20th October 1994.

Sawyer, Robert 1. End of an Era. New English
Library, ISBN 0-450:61749-1, 247pp, A-format
paperback, £4.99. (Sf novel, first published in
the USA, 1994; Sawyer is a Canadian author,
born 1960, and this is his fifth novel although
probably his first to be published in Britain.)
6th October 1 994.

- interzone January 1995

(Shelley, Mary.| The Essential Frankenstein.

Edited by Leonard Wolf. Illustrated by
Christopher Bing. Plume, ISBN 0-452-26968-
7, 357pp, C-format paperback, £8.99.
(Annotated edition of the classic horror
novel, first published in the USA, 1993; the
scholarship may be worthy, but this is a
rather naff presentation: the author's name
does not appear on the spine, and she's
barely acknowledged on the title page -
"Written and Edited by Leonard Wolf," it says,
"including the complete novel by Mary
Shelley"; the illustrations are mediocre;
Plume is an imprint of Penguin USA, but this
is "A Byron Preiss Visual Publications, Inc.
Book"; it's is the second American printing,
with a British price added.) 27th October
1994.

Slung, Michele, ed. I Shudder at Your
Touch: 22 Tales of Sex and Horror. Roc,
ISBN 0-14-015967-3, xv+379pp, A-format
paperback, cover by Graham Potts, £4.99.
(Horror anthology, first published in the USA,
1991; third Penguin printing; it contains
mainly reprint stories by Robert Aickman,
Clive Barker, Michael Blumlein, lonathan
Carroll, Angela Carter, Thomas M. Disch,
Stephen R. Donaldson, Christopher Fowler,
Stephen King, Patrick McGrath, Ruth Rendell
and others; a classic anthology of its type;
recommended.) 27th October 1994.

Slung, Michele, ed. Shudder Again: 22 Tales
of Sex and Horror. Roc, ISBN 0-14-023443-8,
357pp, A-format paperback, £4.99. (Horror
anthology, first published in the USA, 1993;
this follow-up contains mainly reprint stories
by I. G. Ballard, Ray Bradbury, Ramsey Camp-
bell, Nancy A. Collins, A. E. Coppard, Conan
Doyle, Harlan Ellison, Elizabeth lane Howard,
Arthur Machen, Mervyn Peake, Lisa Tuttle, T.
H. White and others; despite stiff competition
from the excellent Ellen Datlow (see her Little
Deaths: 24 Tales of Sex and Horror, listed here
two months ago], Michele Slung is really very
good at this sort of thing: her preface and
story-notes are first-class, her choice of
stories impeccable.) 27th October 1994.

Stableford, Brian. The Werewolves of
London. Carroll & Graf, ISBN 0-7867-0180-3,
467pp, A-format paperback, $4.95.
(Fantasy/horror/metaphysical sf novel, first
published in the UK, 1990; reviewed by (ohn
Clute in Interzone 43.) November 1994.

Stasheff, Christopher. A Wizard in Mind.
"The First Chronicle of the Rogue Wizard."
Tor, ISBN 0-312-85695-4, 222pp, hardcover,
$19.95. (Fantasy novel, first edition; proof
copy received; the first in a new sub-series of
"Warlock" books.) March 1995.

Sutton, David, ed. Voices From Shadow.

Introduction by Stephen )ones. Illustrated by
(im Pitts, Alan Hunter and others. Shadow
Publishing ( 194 Station Rd., Kings Heath,

Birmingham B14 7TE|, no ISBN, 64pp, small-
press paperback, £3.99 |£4.25, or US$11,
postage inclusive, payable to David Sutton |.
(Collection of critical essays about horror/
fantasy fiction, first edition; contributors
include Mike Ashley, Eddy C. Berlin, Ramsey
Campbell and others; authors covered
include Aickman, Lovecraft, C. L. Moore and
William Morris; the pieces are reprinted with
revisions from the Shadow small-press
magazine, 1968-74.) Late entry: 30th Septem-
ber publication, received in October 1994.

Swanwick, Michael. The Iron Dragon's
Daughter. Millennium, ISBN 1-85798-146-4,
376pp, A-format paperback, cover by Geoff
Taylor, £4.99. (Fantasy novel, first published
in the USA, 1993; reviewed by Paul McAuley
in Interzone 83.) 10th November 1994.

Trevor, Elleston. Flycatcher. Tor/Forge, ISBN
0-312-85647-4, 286pp, hardcover, $21.95.
(Horror/suspense novel, first edition; Elleston
Trevor really is a phenomenon: he's been
writing prolifically for more than 50 years,
mainly thrillers (including the "Adam
Hall"/Quiller books], and yet he still looks so
young in his publicity photos!) October 1994.

Uglow, lenny, ed. The Chatto Book of
Ghosts. Chatto & Windus, ISBN 0-701 1-6147-
7, xvi+479pp, hardcover, cover by Julian
Abela-Hyzler, £16.99. (Ghost-story anthology,
first edition; yet another "commonplace
book" (see D. J. Enright's Oxford Book of the
Supernatural, listed here last month], with
extracts from numerous works rather than
complete stories; authors include the
inevitable Homer and Shakespeare, Dickens
and Henry James, Kipling and Angela Carter,
but some of the choices are quite surprising:
there's a bit from William Gibson's sf novel
Mona Lisa Overdrive in here, and quotes from
fiction by Orson Scott Card, Terry Pratchett
and Anne Rice.) 31st October 1994.

Vonarburg, Elisabeth. Reluctant Voyagers.
Translated by Jane Brierley. Bantam/Spectra,
ISBN 0-553-56242-8, 469pp, A-format
paperback, $5.99. (Sf novel, first published in
Canada as Les voyageurs malgre eux, 1994;
proof copy received.) March 1995.

Warrington, Freda. Sorrow's Light. Pan, ISBN
0-330-33348-8, 257pp, A-format paperback,
cover by David Bergen, £4.99. (Fantasy novel,
first published in 1993.) 1 1th November 1994.

Weis, Margaret, and Tracy Hickman. Into the
Labyrinth: A Death Gate Novel. Bantam,

ISBN 0-553-40378-8, 45 lpp, A-format
paperback, cover by Stephen Youll, £4.99.
(Fantasy novel, first published in the USA,

1993; sixth in the series.) October 1 994.
65 —

Books Reviewed and Received

SPINOFFERY

This is a list of all hooks received which fall into
those sub-types ofsf, fantasy and horror which
may be termed novelizations, recursive fictions,
spinoffs, sequels by other hands, shared worlds
and sharecrops (including non-fiction about
shared worlds, films and TV, etc.). The collective
term "Spinoffery" has been coined as a heading
for the sake of brevity.

Anderson, Kevin ]. Champions of the Force:
The Jedi Academy Trilogy, Volume 3. "Star
Wars." Bantam, ISBN 0-553-40810-0, 324pp,
A-format paperback, cover by lohn Alvin,
£3.99. (Sf movie spinoff novel, first published
in the USA, 1994.) 10th November 1994.

Anonymous, ed. The Art of Star Wars:
Episode VI, Return of the jedi. Del Rey,
ISBN 0-345-39204-3, 153pp, very large-format
paperback, cover by Ralph McQuarrie, $18.

(Sf art book, including colour matte
paintings, roughs, storyboard extracts,
posters, etc., and the complete script by
Lawrence Kasdan and George Lucas of the
film Return of the Jedi ; originally published in
the USA as The Art of Return of the fedi, 1983.)
1 3th October 1 994.

Ashley, Mike, ed. The Camelot Chronicles:
Heroic Adventures From the Time of King
Arthur. Carroll 8- Graf, ISBN 0-7867-0085-8,
xiii+41 8pp, trade paperback, cover by C. Luis
Rey, $12.95. (Fantasy anthology, first
published in the UK, 1992; a "shared-world
anthology" of sorts, and a follow-up to the
same editor's The Pendragon Chronicles
1 1990] , it contains a mix of new and reprinted
works by Hilaire Belloc, Vera Chapman, Keith
Taylor, Peter Tremayne, P. G. Wodehouse,
lane Yolen and many others; presumably it
was published in Britain by Robinson, but we
didn’t receive a review copy at the time.)
October 1 994.

Bizoney, Piers. 2001: Filming the Future.

Foreword by Arthur C. Clarke. Aurum Press,
ISBN 1-85410-365-2, 167pp, very large-format
paperback, £14.95. ("Behind-the-scenes"
account of the making of the classic Stanley
Kubrick sf movie; first edition; illustrated
throughout in colour with photographs, film
stills, production artwork, etc.) 20th October
1994.

Call, Deborah, ed. The Art of Star Wars:
Episode V, The Empire Strikes Back. Text
by Vic Bulluck and Valerie Hoffman. Del Rey,
ISBN 0-345-39203-5, 176pp, very large-format
paperback, cover by Ralph McQuarrie, $18.
(Sf art book, including colour matte
paintings, roughs, storyboard extracts, etc.;
originally published in the USA as The Art of
The Empire Strikes Back, 1980.) 13th October
1994.

Clarke, Arthur C., and Gentry Lee. Rama
Revealed. "The magnificent conclusion to
the story of Rama." Orbit, ISBN 1-85723-234-
8, 477pp, C-format paperback, £9.99. (Sf
novel, first published in 1993; third of a
sharecropped trilogy (mainly by Gentry Lee]
based on Clarke's original novel Rendezvous
with Rama.) 17th November 1994.

Daley, Brian. Star Wars: The National Public
Radio Dramatization. Del Rey, ISBN 0-345-
39109-8, 346pp, B-format paperback, $1 1. (Sf
movie spinoff radio script, "based on
characters and situations created by George
Lucas"; first edition.) 13th October 1994.

Gross, Edward, and Mark A. Altman, eds.
Great Birds of the Galaxy: Gene
Roddenberry & the Creators of Star Trek.

Boxtree, ISBN 0-7522-0968-X, 143pp, very
large-format paperback, £9.99. (Interview
collection featuring various makers of the sf
television series; first published in the USA,
1994; among those interviewed, in addition
to the late Roddenberry, are Nicholas Meyer,
Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner.) 27th
October 1 994.

Hinton, Craig. The Crystal Bucephalus.

"Doctor Who: The Missing Adventures."
Virgin/Doctor Who, ISBN 0-426-20429-8,
296pp, A-format paperback, £4.99. (Sf
television-series spinoff novel, first edition;
presumably a debut novel by a British writer.)
October 1 994.

Kalogridis, Jeanne. Covenant With the
Vampire. "The Diaries of the Family Dracul."
Headline, ISBN 0-7472-1244-9, 244pp,
hardcover, cover by Keith Scayfe, £16.99.
(Horror novel, first published in the USA,

1 994; it's the first of a trilogy which
prequelizes [great word, eh?| Bram Stoker's
Dracula-, the publishers are keeping the
author's previous career a secret, but
apparently Jeanne Kalogridis is the real name
of someone who is much better known under
a pseudonym.) 6th October 1994.

Leonard, Paul. Venusian Lullaby. "Doctor
Who: The Missing Adventures." Virgin/Doctor
Who, ISBN 0-426-20424-7, 312pp, A-format
paperback, cover by Alister Pearson, £4.99. (Sf
television-series spinoff novel, first edition;
"Paul Leonard" is a pseudonym for P. ). L.
Hinder, small-press writer and Interzone
subscriber, and this is presumably his debut
novel; the Doctor Who series is turning out to
be a useful proving ground for new British sf
writers.) October 1994.

Milan, Victor. Close Quarters. "Battletech."
Roc, ISBN 0-451-45378-6, 390pp, A-format
paperback, cover by Boris Vallejo, £3.99.
(Shared-world sf novel, based on a role-
playing game; first published in the USA,

1 994; it's copyright "FASA Corporation"; this

is the American first edition of September,
with a British price sticker.) 27th October 1994.

O'Mahoney, Daniel. Falls the Shadow. "The
New Doctor Who Adventures." Virgin/Doctor
Who, ISBN 0-426-20427-1, 356pp, A-format
paperback, cover by Kevin Jenkins, £4.99. (Sf
television-series spinoff novel, first edition;
another debut novel by a new British writer.)
October 1 994.

Rewolinski, Leah. Star Wreck: The Series.

Illustrated by Harry Trumbore. "Five
unauthorised parodies." Boxtree, ISBN 0-
7522-0830-6, 597pp, C-format paperback,
£8.99. (Sf television-series parodic omnibus;
the five constituent short novels were first
published in the USA, 1989-1993; they
recount the adventures of Captain James T.
Smirk and Mr Smock aboard the starship
Endocrine.) 20th October 1994.

Titelman, Carol, ed. The Art of Star Wars:
Episode IV, A New Hope. Del Rey, ISBN 0-
345-39202-7, 1 75pp, very large-format
paperback, cover by Ralph McQuarrie, $18.

(Sf art book, including colour matte
paintings, roughs, storyboard extracts,
posters, etc., and the complete script by
George Lucas of the film Star Wars-, originally
published in the USA as The Art of Star Wars,
1979.) 13th October 1994.

Watson, Ian. Harlequin. "Warhammer
40,000." Boxtree, ISBN 0-7522-0965-5,
v+246pp, hardcover, cover by Dave Gallagher,
£15.99. (Shared-universe role-playing-game-
inspired sf novel, first edition; sequel to the
same author's Inquisitor; this is the first
Games Workshop-tied hardcover novel, as
opposed to A- or B-format paperback
originals.) 27th October 1 994.

West, Adam, with Jeff Rovin. Back to the
Batcave: My Story... Titan, ISBN 1-85286-
529-6, 257pp, B-format paperback, £7.99.
(Reminiscences of the actor who played
Batman in the 1960s sf/fantasy TV series; first
published in the USA, 1994.) 27th October
1994.

Williams, Tad. Caliban's Hour, illustrated by
the author. Legend, ISBN 0-09-926361-0,
180pp, hardcover, cover by Bruce Pennington,
£12.99. (Fantasy novella, first edition; a
sequel by another hand to Shakespeare's The
Tempest.) 20th October 1994.

Yeovil, Jack. Beasts in Velvet. "Warhammer."
Boxtree, ISBN 0-7522-0969-8, xiv+269pp, A-
format paperback, cover by Fangorn, £4.99.
(Shared-universe role-playing-game-inspired
fantasy novel, first published in 1991; a
sequel to the same author's Drachenfels; "Jack
Yeovil" is a pseudonym of Kim Newman.)
27th October 1994.

66

interzone January 1995

SCIENCE-FICTION STUDIES: I'm missing
just four issues from my otherwise complete
run of this heavyweight journal - numbers 5,
17. 18 and 19. Does anyone have copies to
sell or trade? (I have a spare copy of number
4 for sale or exchange.) Contact David
Pringle, Interzone, 217 Preston Drive, Brighton
BN1 6FL, UK (tel. 0273-504710).

THE ART OF DANNY FLYNN ...Hope you've
already bought the book, recently published
by Paper Tiger with a foreword by Arthur C.
Clarke. As well as illustrating book covers, 1
enjoy taking on private commissions.
Reasonable rates. For further information
please write to my new address: Danny Flynn,
67 Sharland Close, Grove, Wantage, Oxon.
0X12 OAF. (Prompt reply.)

DREAMS FROM THE STRANGERS' CAFE

#4. A dark and moody magazine of fiction
and poetry. Eight stories, 56 pages. Totally
reworked and revamped - £2.50/1 or £9/4.
Cheques to John Gaunt, 15 Clifton Grove,
Clifton, Rotherham S65 2AZ (E-mail:
I.C.Gaunt@Sheffield.ac.uk).

NEW MAGAZINE - born out of boredom -
requires quality stuff from old and new fiction
pimps. Cross-genre but highly cynical, PC-
trashing stories particularly welcome. Spill
your guts onto paper and send to: AXIOM, 60
Greenfarm Road, Ely, Cardiff CF5 4RH.
Enclose SAE.

NEW DAWN FADES issue 13: Space Opera is
Dead, Long Live Star Trek? Fantasy Short
Stories of Robert Louis Stevenson, lames
Blaylock. New fiction from Chapman,
Ferguson, Miller and Steel. £2.50 from 44
Clermiston Road North. Edinburgh EH4 7BN.
Cheques payable to New Dawn Fades.

A DWARVEN HIGH-FANTASY
EXTRAVAGANZA, incorporating dark and sword
& sorcery fantasy. ISBN 1-899099-15-8, signed
by the author. £2.50 UK, £3.25 elsewhere;
inclusive of p&p. Order from Kelvin Knight, 3
Saint Ronan's Road, Southsea, Hants. P04 OPN.

SF/HORROR/CRIME and vintage paperback
firsts catalogue. Also collectors' books and price
guides, plus Paperback, Pulp & Comic
Collector magazine (£3.50 inc, p&p). Send two
24p stamps to Zardoz Books, 20 Whitecroft,
Dilton Marsh, Wiltshire BA13 4D|.

SMALL

ADS

BIG CASH PRIZES for short stories, articles,
poems. Quarterly competitions. Optional
critiques. SAE to Writers Viewpoint, Dept. Int.,
P.O. Box 514, Eastbourne BN23 6RE.

FOR SALE: SF/F, horror, mysteries, etc. Books,
magazines, comics. Thousands. Free search.
Buying, trading. Write: )S, 1500 Main Avenue,
Kaukauna, WI 54130, USA.

ERIC FRANK RUSSELL BOOKS WANTED: Men,
Martians and Machines (2nd edition, Dobson,

1963) and Far Stars (2nd edition, Dobson, about

1964) in nice clean jackets. Also Sinister Barrier
(1st UK, Dobson, 1967) in a fine or better jacket.
Top prices paid. 1. Ingham, 41 Rosemary Avenue,
Earley, Reading, Berks. RG6 2YQ. Tel. 0734-
869071

THE UNLIMITED DREAM COMPANY: imported
books and magazines for sale. Metaworlds: Best
Australian SF edited by Paul Collins (Penguin
Australia) - stories by George Turner, Damien
Broderick, Terry Dowling, Greg Egan & others -
£6 post paid. Also, Aphelion Books titles by Sean
McMullen & others; and from America the
brilliant SF Eye, etc. For details send SAE to
THE UNLIMITED DREAM COMPANY, 127
Gaisford St., Kentish Town, London NW5 2EG.

SECOND-HAND sf/fantasy/film & TV tie-ins,
etc, etc. Very reasonable prices. Send SAE for
latest catalogue: Blank Books, 161 Parsonage
Rd., Withington, Manchester M20 9NL (tel.
061-448 0501).

SUBSTANCE: Mature SF/Fantasy magazine
featuring Stephen Baxter, Ben Jeapes, D. F.
Lewis, Richard Kerr, Sally Ann Melia. First 20
subscribers receive free Paper Tiger Miniature
- pocket-sized art-book series featuring
Burns, Matthews, Pennington, Vallejo, White,
Woodroffe. £9 for four-issue subscription.
Cheques made out to Neville Barnes, 65
Conbar Avenue, Rustington, West Sussex
BN16 3LZ.

WANTED URGENTLY: reading copies of the
following "Hollywood novels": Jane Allen, I Lost
My Girlish Laughter (1938); Jeffrey Dell, Nobody
Ordered Wolves (1939); Timothy Findley, The
Butterfly Plague (1969); josh Greenfeld, The
Return of Mr Hollywood (1984); Noel Langley,
Hocus Pocus (1942); Frederic Raphael, California
Time 1 1975); Melville Shavelson, Lualda (1975);
Thomas Wiseman, Czar (1965); Bernard Wolfe,
Come On Out, Daddy (1963); Rudolph Wurlitzer,
Slow Fade ( 1984). If you can supply any, or even
just one, please contact David Pringle at
Interzone, 217 Preston Drove, Brighton BN1 6FL,
UK (tel. 0273-504710).

CRITICAL ASSEMBLY 1 & II:: both volumes of
Hugo-winner David Langford’s legendary sf
review columns. All revised/reset; each volume
70,000 words softbound. Each £9.75 post free
from David Langford, 94 London Rd., Reading
RG1 5AU (e-mail address:
ansible@cix.compulink.co.uk).

BRIGHTON AREA readers of Interzone are
welcome to join us on Friday nights at The Mitre,
a friendly pub on Baker Street (near the Open
Market). A few of us meet from 9-1 1pm, in the
smaller of the two rooms, for informal drink and
chat. You'll recognize us by the copies of IZ or
other sf publications lying around — so come
along and make yourselves known. (Editors.)

THE THIRD ALTERNATIVE: Issue Four
available now. Quality production, startling
artwork and superb new fiction from Lawrence
Dyer, Don Webb, Bruce Boston. Steve Antczak,
many more. £2.50 |£9 four issues). 5 Martins
Lane, Witcham, Ely, Cambs. CB6 2LB.
Submissions welcome.

SMALL ADS in Interzone reach over 10,000
people. If you wish to advertise please send your
ad copy, together with payment, to Interzone,
217 Preston Drove, Brighton BN1 6FL, UK. Rates:
25 pence per word, minimum often words,
discount of 10% for insertions repeated in three
ri.-; is inclusive). Overseas bookdealers:
we may be willing to trade Small-Ad space for
books and book-search services - please enquire.

COMING NEXT MONTH

In addition to the powerful conclusion of Brian Stableford's "The
Hunger and Ecstasy of Vampires" we bring you a sharp new story by
Australian star Greg Egan - that’s "Mitochondrial Eve.” There will be
other fiction, plus all our usual features and reviews. So keep an eye
open for the February Interzone , on sale in January.

Meanwhile, Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year to you all.

interzone January 1995

67

GENRE'S GLORIOUSLY TACKY HEARTLAND'

William Gibson

'A MUST!' FOll
SCI-FI APDJC
JOHN fil/h/

RBACK ORIGINAL- OUT NOW

AN ORBIT P

GONZO GIDERPUNK SCI-FI FROM THE GENRE'S
GLORIOUSLY TACKY HEARTLAND':
WILLIAM GIBSON